Chucks (2015)

Sixteen-year-old Maeva, known as Mae, steals spray cans from a hardware store and uses them to tag parked trains and the walls of buildings. She is caught during one of these escapades and sentenced to community service, which she must complete at the Vienna AIDS Support Association. At first, she does everything she can to get on everyone’s nerves and practically begs them to throw her out. For instance, when she smokes a cigarette during a break and harasses Paul, who is five years older than she is, he simply smiles back gently. Twenty-one-year-old Paul, a gentle young man infected with HIV and hepatitis C, is Mae’s exact opposite. He is a photographer with a lovely, bright apartment, lots of books, and an aquarium with an axolotl. However, because of his AIDS, he does not have long to live, and his friends have withdrawn from him since he fell ill. Mae, meanwhile, lives with her squatter and punk friends Tamara and Jakob. With her fiery red hair and red Converse shoes, she roams the streets of Vienna as a punk, smoking and drinking. She is aggressively confrontational and rebels against everything and everyone, refusing to let anyone tell her what to do; she rejects a conventional, middle-class life. One day, she takes Paul by surprise by moving into his place without warning. Mae has a troubled relationship with her mother, who, for example, invites her to her Tupperware birthday party, which Mae attends only reluctantly. Mae also writes and tries her hand at slam poetry. At one of her performances, she spots Paul in the audience and begins talking about her brother Sebastian, who died of leukemia, how she and her parents have dealt with their grief, and her brother’s shoes—the titular Chucks—which she has worn ever since his death. Paul and Mae grow closer, talking, among other things, about his impending death, and their friendship develops into a romantic relationship. One day, Paul suddenly throws Mae out of his apartment, explaining that it has all become too much for him. Mae initially accepts this, but when she realizes that he must have received his new, worse lab results, she goes back to him. He tells her that his medication is going to be changed to a new drug. Her relationship with Paul brings Mae closer to her mother. When her mother invites them both to Christmas dinner, Mae tells her about Paul’s illness. Paul’s health begins to deteriorate increasingly, and Mae stays by his side and cares for him throughout, even after he is admitted to hospital and can barely respond. At a reading where Mae presents her book, she and her mother reconcile.