Tatyana Aleshicheva about the “Dallas Buyers Club”

Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée already had experience collaborating with Hollywood, where he shot a rather bland biopic about Queen Victoria, “The Young Victoria” (2009), one of those that usually awards film awards for makeup and costumes. His next project, “Café de Flor” (2011), this time in French, with the participation of Vanessa Paradis, mixed a little bit of everything: a mystical plot about the transmigration of souls in the style of Coelho’s popular novels, and a touching - sometimes too much - story about a young mother , who never wants to send a child with Down syndrome to a special institution - a kind of tabloid reading with a tear. By all accounts, Valle, after an impressive start in the mid-1990s, has been considered a solid middling performer in recent years, but his new entry into Hollywood, Dallas Buyers Club, takes the Canadian to a whole new level. This is a completely uplifting story, the main character of which is a rude and cynical character: this balance turned out to be ideal. Last but not least, the film was “made” by Matthew McConaughey, who apparently sold his soul to the devil somewhere on a Los Angeles crossroads: all the projects of the last two years with his participation are excellent. From a muscular Hollywood handsome man, of whom there are a dime a dozen without him, he somehow abruptly and suddenly turned into a serious dramatic actor, and now in his career one excellent role follows another without a break.

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The terribly emaciated McConaughey (the tabloid press happily trumpeted that he lost almost twenty kilograms for the role) plays Dallas cowboy Ron Woodroof, who died of AIDS in 1992, a lout, a rude man and a homophobe, in whom doctors almost accidentally discover a deadly virus. You can't kick people like Woodroof to the doctor - always drunk and swaggering, he ends up in the hospital only after an incident at a construction site, when a sparking wire burns his eyes. And then he learns from the sweet doctor (Jennifer Garner) and her snake-like bald boss (Denis O'Hare) that he has a month to live. It’s the mid-1980s, and there is practically nothing to treat HIV-positive patients - new drugs are being tested all the time, but for the drug to be approved and put into production, it takes years, which terminally ill patients do not have. However, a large pharmaceutical corporation is forcing things forward by promoting the drug AZT, which is rumored to be unusually effective. Woodroof, already shocked by the news that he has contracted the "faggot" virus, fails to get into the group on which the new drug is being tested. Then he tells the doctors to go to hell and, boasting that “no infection can defeat Woodruff in thirty days,” gets the medicine for money from the hospital orderly. But when the orderly’s supply of AZT runs out, the exhausted Woodroof, with his last breath, rushes on his tip to Mexico to a certain Doctor Vass (Griffin Dunne), who was deprived of his license, but not of his medical experience and talent. Then a completely new story begins for Woodroof - Dr. Vass tells him to stop taking the dangerous and actually immunosuppressive AZT and prescribes a whole set of restorative drugs, which Woodroof first smuggles across the border under the guise of a priest. This is how he lays the foundation for the “Dallas Buyers Club”, fooling local lawmen - Woodroof does not sell illegal pills, but “distributes” them to club members. However, to become a member, you must first pay a hefty entrance fee. Woodroof's moment of truth arrives: half of his customers are gay, and he is forced to constantly deal with them, expanding his business with the help of the broken, unhappy and lovable drag queen Rayon (Jared Leto). It was as if God’s providence specifically rubbed his nose into a subculture that he hated to the gnashing of his teeth, being an exemplary macho.

The real Ron Woodroof lived seven years longer than the doctors gave him. His efforts to supply Americans with drugs banned in America were a desperate guerrilla campaign that he waged single-handedly against both the government and a crooked pharmaceutical corporation. The angry, rude and sneaky Woodroof, a typical anti-hero with bestial manners, turns out to be the most decent person in this story. And his desperate attempts to stay in this world as long as possible, saving himself and others, from a private case turn into almost an epic about the struggle of a stubborn little man for life. As for McConaughey, with his participation this medicinal story looks more exciting than any other thriller and every minute of his presence in the frame is precious.

In theaters from February 27

Tatyana Aleshicheva

Other film premieres of the week

Cowboy against the Ministry of Health