Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

even when facing death, the guy (Cyril Collard) never considered to repent.generally speaking, the movie is about the so called "open relationship" a guy sleeps with another guy, then, sleeps with that guy's girlfriend, then, with the girlfriend's girlfriend(roommate). etc just like most french movies of the genre, there is nothing new. the guy who was like that deserved a totally good riddance..worthless and ruinful in the world..so being rotten in hell might be hopeful.since IMDb is happy at deleting my sincere reviews(against their radical leftist world view and true nature).well, that's enough for this one. amen

This film was a succès de scandale when it was released twenty years ago, and although (in Europe and America) HIV is not the death sentence that it was at the time, the film still packs an emotional wallop. It is the portrait of a completely self-centered man who is willing to put others at risk in search of his own pleasure and self-actualization. Is he a despicable character? Yes. Does that mean the film is automatically bad? No,however...The film contains too many unfocused scenes of characters lashing out. By the fourth or fifth scene of the young female protagonist screaming on the phone, screaming in the street, screaming at the door of the apartment, it becomes overdetermined. The film tries to tackle too many subjects--sadomasochism, skinheads, internalized homophobia, bisexuality, AIDS and responsibility, teenage love... it ends up something of a hot mess. I gave it six out of ten because I feel that it is worth seeing, because it captures a certain zeitgeist of the pre-antiretroviral moment, but one does feel a bit on watching it today that it has not aged all that well.

Terrible, meaningless French film with trademark French characters who are totally unlikeable and completely self centred. Plot deals with a very heavy, multi-layered subject - that of AIDS and bi-sexual relationships - yet fails entirely in its attempt to do anything with it.The whole movie is almost like a lame excuse for controversial sex scenes, though this is nothing new to the French. The reasonably strong performances from the lead players can do nothing to redeem their ugly roles and the nonsense which one might otherwise call a storyline. "Savage Nights" never stood a chance! This is such a bad movie its just plain frustrating trying to sift through the mess, confusion and loathsome people to find a reason why? Why?!! All controversy and no idea! Just downright awful! When you tell a story, have a point.Friday, September 15, 1995 - Astor Theatre

The first serious movie to deal with HIV, "Les nuits fauves" felt like a Joe Frazier hook when it came out in 1992. Gone are all the pitiful sentimental demonstrations of future films like "Philadelphia" . In fact, AIDS is merely the backdrop of the film. Cyril Collard never asks for pity. The movie is both a confession and an hymn to life. It doesn't try to moralize the audience, although some spectators were concerned about the "message" such a film might send. You have to remember that the events described in LNF take place in 1986, when the concept of HIV and AIDS were still abstract and to be defined. Collard himself said in a 1992 interview that the irresponsability of his character, Jean, having unprotected sex although aware he is infected, would be rightly considered criminal by now. The virus serves as a driving force for a main character that is learning to love, opening himself to others, to the world. But to reach the light, you must first go through the darkness and the task is not an easy one to witness. LNF demands a lot on the viewer, asking him to let go of his preconceive ideas and ideals. Very much influenced by his mentor Maurice Pialat, Collard makes a daring film, one which you could never imagine coming from the all too clean world of Hollywood film making. Here, energy comes first, technical aspects of movie making later. Therefore life, real life, shines through. "Les nuits fauves" is a force to be reckon with. An unsettling experience I will never forget.