I'm sorry, but I don't join all the praise that is given here. I really enjoyed this movie and acknowledge the gripping premise, and the good acting and direction. But I didn't like the script very much. All characters seemed a bit bland and there was little connection between any of them, even the supposed lovers like Manu and Adrien or Mehdi and Sarah. In fact, it seemed to me as if everyone was very much focusing on themselves and I couldn't find any sympathetic character among all of them. Take Manu's sister Julie, who even at the day of the funeral of her brother seemed to care more for her cherished role in an opera; or Adrien, who loses himself in his role of potential savior of the AIDS-epidemic; or Mehdi, who was more involved with fear for his own health, and who switches shamelessly between Manu, Sarah and in the end even Manu's sister, while in the meantime relentlessly executing a witch-hunt on brothels and prostitutes, even if this means hurting innocent people like Julie. Or Sarah, who sees her baby not as a responsibility but as a burden. <br /><br />Sure enough, Manu's character is endearing: young and careless and on top of everything in the beginning, but in his (extremely improbable) affair with Medhi he doesn't hesitate a minute to sack Adrien in a very harsh way.<br /><br />The whole AIDS-related section with Adrien (who at the start of the movie impressed me as a low-key local physician) suddenly becoming a professor and a national AIDS-expert, and all the lecture-like information on the disease, struck me as a bit patronizing and undermined the dramatic storyline. Furthermore the movie seems like 20 minutes too long, the part after Manu's death doesn't fit in at all. Are we to think, in witnessing in the final scene yet another peaceful picnic at the river, that everything is as it was before? The new boyfriend for Adrien is as improbable as the coupling of Manu and Medhi (even Adrien seems to think that). And why this complicated nationality-issue, whatever language he spoke it never did come out as genuine. And as someone already commented on this site: did Manu really have only one shirt and one pair of trousers?!? <br /><br />On the other hand I have to praise Sami Bouajila and young Johan Libéreau, they did an excellent job and carried the whole movie. And for some reason I really liked the photography, it has this French quality of balancing between the intimate and the claustrophobic and makes French movies often feel like your stepping into someone's private home. And most important of all: Téchiné succeeds in avoiding all larmoyancy: it's as if the fast pace of the movie tries to keep up with the lively spirit of Manu, the story waltzes around the rocks of melodrama and as such it resembles Real Life itself: in spite of everything the band has to play on.