THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – NOT TO BE MISSED
It is enough to have seen When Harry Met Sally (1989), by Rob Reiner, and a handful of romantic comedies to know that a prolonged clash between two strangers can lead to a great love story. In A night, by Alex Lutz, the providential argument takes place in the Paris metro: Nathalie (Karin Viard), fifty-something disheveled, rushes into a crowded train before the doors close. Shaken, Aymeric (Alex Lutz), an equally shaggy quadra, seizes the opportunity to start a verbal sparring match with her, to which she willingly complies: “You could say sorry! / It’s okay, I didn’t break your arm! /To be sorry, you need a fracture /Are you tone police? »
What emerges from this public dispute, held with a flamethrower, is a furious complicity. A few seconds later, a photo booth shelters the intercourse of bellicose and the banks of a lake following the negotiations. They give each other one night to love each other before returning to normal life, with spouses and children. We think of Before Sunrise (1995), by Richard Linklater, in which Céline (Julie Delpy), a French student, accompanied Jesse (Ethan Hawke), an American visiting Europe, on a visit to Vienna during the fourteen hours that separated him from the plane . Intensity of brevity.
There is in Alex Lutz a certain talent to endow a blue flower story with a moving grace. What is it due to? With assumed melodrama and a frank sympathy for all that is old-fashioned (sets, costumes, outdated dialogues, etc.). five years later guya mockumentary about a forgotten variety singer, the filmmaker always proves to be just as skilful in making the “present of past things”according to the formula of Saint Augustine, which speaks well of the living reality of memory.
One of the remarkable features ofA night, presented in May, at the end of the Un certain regard selection, at the Cannes Film Festival, consists in describing a newborn couple in the manner of an old couple, with all that it entails of reciprocity, regrets and memories. . In the light of a few details, he makes the flirters’ immediate complicity perceptible by taking the current formula head on: it’s as if they’ve known each other forever.
Strolling as a flashback
Marriage survey, A night offers as an appetizer a fussy and funny reflection on its usual words (“alchemy”, “being someone’s type”, “availability”, “letting go”), before turning into a walk in a deserted Paris where Nathalie and Aymeric overlap, move away, find themselves in a perpetual leveling… Will they be able to leave each other and act as if nothing had happened?
You have 29.61% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.