Jean-Marc Vallée
Dallas Buyers Club

The opus n. 1 by Canadian Jean-Marc Vallée is an American film tout-court.

The plot is quickly told: a homophobic, cocaine-addicted, womanizing electrician discovers, in the mid-'80s, that he has contracted AIDS. A bad story, especially for someone who thinks only gays can get it. He does some research and finds out that, no, not only gays are at risk. Meanwhile, the FDA approves a drug that seems to do more harm than good in treating AIDS, while our protagonist, with the help of a compliant hospital worker in Dallas, the city where the film is set, discovers that in Mexico, a disbarred doctor uses an unapproved, working medication. Together with a cross-dressing friend (the homophobia gradually disappears), he sets up the Dallas Buyers Club, where, in short, they heal patients who do not get results in the hospital with the FDA-approved drug.

It is a small great glimpse of American entrepreneurship and free initiative under the stars and stripes, where anyone can create more or less a legitimate empire. And it is perhaps the most interesting part of the film, given that the sentimental aspect (the protagonist falls in love with a doctor) and the change in mental perspective (from homophobe to friend of gays, if not a friend, at least sympathetic) appear more frayed and less focused, including some stylistic lapses into melodramatic excess (the gay friend who returns, dressed as a man, to the father who never understood him).

But the way it tells what was the shock of AIDS in the '80s (starting with the famous Rock Hudson case) and the fears it caused among people is told, written, and acted out in a masterful way. Not without striking at the greed of pharmaceutical companies at the expense of the actual quality of the product.

Three Oscars, for makeup, lead actor (an extraordinary and emaciated Matthew McConaughey), and supporting actor (a surprising Jared Leto).