SIDA

This short piece was a project developed between director Gaspar Noé ("Irreversible", "Enter the Void") along with Oxfam, an NGO who follows several social causes around the globe and this one project was to increase awareness on HIV/AIDS - later on it was included on a collage of short films called "8". Here we follow Dieudonne Ilboudo (1964-2005), a man from Burkina Faso who tells his story about living with the virus and the way he perceives the disease and deals with it. Unlike the usual associated image many people had (and still have, as strange as it is) concerning about the epidemic being a "homosexual problem only", here's a heterosexual man talking on the many obstacles he faces while dealing with opportunistic diseases, treatments that doesn't help him all that much, leaving sicker and sicker and the difficulties he dealt while trying to find ways to open up about the topic with his family - as we're told right from the start, he has four children and his wife died during labor work for the last child.

Noé's telling isn't appealing enough because it consists of Ilboudo talking about everything inside of a hospital, a camera that stays with his face and lack of movements inside the facility and it's very easy to just avoid the film and escape his report, when in fact it's something all of us should see. Some viewers will even complain about the aspects concerning the man talking about religion and other things when speaking on his new reality, of which he isn't so certain of how did he acquired it. Nothing wrong with that, I think. Ilboudo's descriptions about how symptoms, effects and all is true to life, saddening and following those, I think the sexually active and careless viewers of it will think twice about their relations after experiencing the after-effects described by the man. And with that, comes his torn and down expressions. He seems and feels all lost. A day thing pleasure it's not worth of timeless sickness - manageable now but it's not like everyone in the world has easy access to the proper treatment, as clearly evidenced by our main figure here, who died a year before the film's release.

Had the director transformed this project into a short film with actors in the style he makes his great films, this would be a better and more comprehensive project. I thought "SIDA" quite important but couldn't get much of an idea on its basic purpose. Too cloudy and repetitive for me but above those minor problems, it's still something relevant to see. In case you wonder about the title, SIDA is the name AIDS is known in French language nations and also in Portugal. 7/10