‘To Live, to Die, to Live Again’ Review: Gaël Morel’s ’90s-Set AIDS Drama Seems a Throwback Before Pointing to a Brighter Future

variety.com:

Guy Lodge Film Critic Nobody really makes AIDS dramas anymore, which seems as good a reason as any to make one now. The disease that, forty-odd years ago, decimated a generation of queer people and prompted a prejudice-driven global panic hasn’t gone away — least of all in various developing countries, where it isn’t popularly defined by gender or sexuality, and death rates are still high.

But its narrative has changed. For many, advances in antiretroviral and preventative drugs have stripped HIV of its aura of terror, making it something to be lived with, not a ticking clock to the end.

With little posturing or overtly groundbreaking intent, French writer-director Gaël Morel unusually and sensitively bridges these eras of HIV/AIDS in his gentle romantic melodrama “To Live, To Die, To Live Again” — beginning in a distinctly Nineties register of mainstream queer cinema, before looking ahead to the 21st century.

Premiering in the non-competitive Cannes Premiere section on the Croisette this year, Morel’s first feature since 2017’s Sandrine Bonnaire vehicle “Catch the Wind” may be too low-key — not to mention out of step with current modes of LGBTQ storytelling — to make much of an impact outside France, though it will surely find favor with certain queer-oriented distributors and festival programmers.