As he begins the story - his first time, at 16, with his math teacher - the camera traces the length of his body, down his back, and suddenly the man he’s speaking of is in the room, behind him, entering him as Sean narrates this vivid, almost haunted return to the past. Nathan asks about a photograph on Sean’s wall, and their conversation progresses to how and when Sean was infected. Afterward the two disengage, and we hear the sound of condoms being pulled off, Sean carefully knotting his in close-up before throwing it away.

They sixty-nine - Sean repositioning himself, reaching for a condom, opening it, and putting it on in a single motion - and we watch Sean’s free hand grip the muscle of Nathan’s ass between his legs before sitting up again and giving in to Nathan. But before they get too far, Sean tells Nathan he prefers to wear a condom - “it’s safer that way” - and Nathan, who is HIV-negative, obliges. Suddenly they’re falling into bed and frantically undressing themselves. After the two start dancing at a club, lights strobing as their bodies move in and out of the darkness, the scene changes seamlessly. One of the most striking scenes in BPM (Beats Per Minute), Robin Campillo’s historical fiction film about ACT UP in Paris in the early 1990s, is a sex scene - the first between Nathan (Arnaud Valois) and Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), who is HIV-positive.