08/09/2021 - VENICE 2021: Casting director Antoinette Boulat delivers a moving, paradoxical, unusual but uneven first feature film, following in the wake of charismatic acting revelation Lou Lampros

"People who have recently lost someone have a certain look, recognizable maybe only to those who have seen that look on their own faces. I have noticed it on my face and I notice it now on others. The look is one of extreme vulnerability, nakedness, openness." By introducing her first feature-length directorial effort, My Night [+see also:
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interview: Antoinette Boulat
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Indeed, it’s this very strange floating state caused by grief, that intense and hypersensitive feeling of emptiness in which deeply buried emotions silently resound and which changes our entire perception of the world around us and our human relationships, which acts as a guiding thread for the wanderings of a very young woman (acting revelation Lou Lampros) who finds herself in Paris by night, on the border between dream and nightmare. It’s a meander full of bad feelings which echoes the huge fears for the future felt by an aimless, disoriented and frantic younger generation ("eternity? What would you fill it with?") who are tempted by intoxication and escape, and feel "both happy and sad, almost for the same reasons." But, like a guardian angel rising out of the shadows of the urban desert, a channel opens, a meeting, an exchange, a path towards freedom and another possible world, potentially one of love…

For five years and since the death of her older sister which led to her father’s passing and her mother’s "meltdown", Marion has been "dealing with it ". But at the age of 18, it’s a very heavy, invisible burden to carry ("people say that it will all be wonderful, but all it takes is one phone call… I don’t even know what there is to dream about?"). Lonely amongst her friends with whom she hangs out on the streets of Paris and lets off steam at a wild party, she slips away at deepest, darkest night to return home. In the deserted streets of the capital, Alex (Israel’s Tom Mercier, the lead actor in Synonyms [+see also:
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Shot in a 1.37:1 format which accentuates the characters’ isolation, My Night is a highly atypical film which seeks to capture and reproduce moving and paradoxical ground of a psychological and geographical nature. It’s an aim which is better fulfilled in the second half of the film (revolving around the endearing lead duo), after an exposition phase which is unarguably varied but also markedly uneven in its more “banal” portrayal of modern-day youth. A certain amount of patience is, therefore, required in order to step through the looking glass and allow oneself to be won over by the unique film language employed by the director.

My Night is produced by Macassar Productions and Sombrero Films alongside Prod Lab and Belgian firm Films du Fleuve, in co-production with Wheelhouse Productions, Thornhill Films and Arte/Cofinova. International sales are steered by Cercamon.

(Translated from French)