Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau (Jeanne and the Perfect Guy) answer two questions that needed to be answered. What if The Neon Demon gave up all ideas of being a respectable narrative film and was just a full-out porno? What if Before Sunrise had a baby with Victoria and the single-evening meet-cute format was held to a linear passage of time and location?

They also answer one that didn’t need to be answered: What if you watched The Neon Demon and Before Sunrise as an ill-advised double feature?

The first 20 minutes of Paris 05:59: Theo and Hugo is a striking, formalist pulse-pounding gay porno where Theo (Geoffrey Couët) and Hugo (François Nambot) meet-fuck (fuck cute?) in a bathhouse. In a world full of driving techno music, color-flooded lights and unsimulated hardcore sex where everybody’s a stranger, these two men find a connection that extends beyond a cock going into an asshole. They lose themselves in each others sex; in their eyes and brains and mouths and…unf. When they’re fucking the rest of the world becomes a blur, and they become each other’s reality. This animalistic connection extends beyond their fucking in a bathhouse. Once they’re finished, they get dressed and walk around together in the late night Paris atmosphere as they talk about life and tra la la.

Well, I say tra la la, but they got caught up in the moment of the late night bathhouse romp and didn’t use a condom. Given that one of them is HIV+, this leads to an AIDS scare in the midst of this Before Sunrise knockoff. In actuality, the AIDS scare isn’t nearly as bad as it seems because this is France where they have a functioning health care system that isn’t dominated by for profit companies and politicians who are being paid off to not do anything about it.

A whole segment of Paris 05:59 is spent with Theo and Hugo as they go to late-night emergency care where they are able to pick up a regimen of anti-HIV medication (the morning-after pill for gay men) and are instructed to come back for more testing in three days to make sure that the virus didn’t actually take hold. Neither Theo nor Hugo are rich people. They ride bicycles and have small broom closets for apartments. Even with those worries, this health scare is never as frightening as it would be in the United States.

Here, that emergency room visit would be about $300+ if you didn’t have health insurance. Then, there would be the extra cost for the testing, and the follow-up visit, and that’s not even counting the price of the medication. And, these characters looked like the type to earn enough not to qualify for low-income discounts but not have a steady-enough job to have insurance and to make these types of visits an actual crisis. That’s because France has extreme regulation of health care costs, unlike the United States, even though it has a hybrid system similar to but much more functional than Obamacare.

The best scene of Paris 05:59 is the opening Neon Demon-inspired orgy. It’s exciting and daring and full-out sexual in ways that few gay films are. American gay cinema is relatively chaste compared to many of its foreign counterparts, in no small part because the gay community wants to be accepted without forcing people to think about men doing sexy things to other men (women having sex with women, on the other hand, is regularly accepted for viewing pleasure).

The rest of the movie, especially in comparison, is kind of just there. This second segment a far more chaste and mellow piece of cinema that is either didactically dealing with gay issues or is trite and simplistic as many real life first-night connections actually are. Before Sunrise is a fragile formula that, without care, can fall into the pitfalls of being boring, trite, or didactic. Many movies since have tried and failed to replicate this casual hang-out style, including Chris Evans’ Before We Go and this summer’s Obama meet-cute Southside With You. As with those, Paris 05:59 never quite gets the vibe down, even though the actors are pleasant enough to hang out with. At times, they feel like they’re being forced through an after-school special, and other moments feel empty and hollow. They never quite get the balance of naturalism this formula demands.

In a way, the marrying of the two parts in a bifurcated structure is telling about life. Sex is sex and it’s compartmentalized compared to the life outside. But, sex is exciting and fun and wonderful, while falling in love is light and fluffy. How do you go from having anonymous raw hookup sex to having a romantic stroll down the street? This is a reality that happens every day, but the transition is rocky and can create discordant emotions. There’s a lot of truth in the structure, even if one side of it needs a much lighter touch.