To Live, To Die, To Live Again [Vivre, mourir, renaître] *** (2024, Victor Belmondo, Lou Lampros, Théo Christine) – Classic Movie Review 13,484

Victor Belmondo.

Gaël Morel’s 2024 French drama film To Live, To Die, To Live Again [Vivre, mourir, renaître] stars Victor Belmondo, Lou Lampros and Théo Christine as young adults in a love triangle, who are sent into a spin by HIV/AIDS.

Director Gaël Morel’s 2024 French drama film To Live, To Die, To Live Again [Vivre, mourir, renaître] stars Victor Belmondo, Lou Lampros and Théo Christine as Cyril, Emma and Sammy, three young adults in a love triangle, who are sent into a spin by HIV/AIDS.

It’s the Nineties in Paris. Emma and Sammy are an item with a son, but Sammy is bisexual, and starts a thing with photographer Cyril. But Cyril is battling HIV and eventually it turns out that promiscuous Sammy has contracted AIDS from an unknown one of his many partners.

To Live, to Die, to Live Again is an interesting and enjoyable, but awkward French romantic melodrama with three good performances to appreciate but a sentimental, manipulative plotline to negotiate, using HIV/AIDS as a central plot device. It is seductively shot and arranged, and quite an affecting emotional ride, but it feels fake and phony, a mere movie concoction. The film might be driving towards it, tugging at the heartstrings, but its hope or promise for a better future seems merely tacked-on wishful thinking. Just look at where we are in 2024!

Victor Belmondo (born 15 December 1993), the grandson of Jean-Paul Belmondo, is very persuasive, in an attractively low key and naturalistic performance, but then Lou Lampros carves out her space strongly in what might otherwise have been a boys’ movie, and Théo Christine smoulders and suffers deeply.

It is co-written by Gaël Morel and Laurette Polmanss.

Also in the cast are Amanda Lear as Leolia, Noah Deric,Elli Medeiros and Stéphane Rideau.

The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 23 May 2024 and was released in France on 25 September 2024.

Belmondo also stars in the 2022 gay film Lie with Me.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,484

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