Les rencontres d'après minuit

Who wrote this thing? Script was lousy. Acting was not there. The actors may be good actors but this movie did them more harm than good. Frankly, I don't think anyone could have pulled this off it was so badly written.

I rarely give a bad review, but someone had to. I feel sorry for the actors. This movie was tedious, boring, and made no logical sense. The story was no good.

This surreal love-party begins with a series of mysterious events, where the three main characters experience some misfortune. It's the young couple, Ali (Kate Moran) and Matthias (Niels Schneider), and their transvestite maid, Udo (Nicolas Maury), who are getting ready for a highly anticipated midnight orgy in their house, where their horny guests arrive one by one during the night.

Their guests are a colorful variety of people, including "The Slut" (Julie Brémond), "The Star" (Fabienne Babe), "The Stud" (Eric Cantona) and "The Teen" (Alain-Fabien Delon), all with their own sexual perversions. Especially Eric Cantona is amusing, as a "Dirk Diggler" kind of character, who is miserable even though he is VERY well-endowed.

During this night of lust, a bunch of weird things happen, which I will no go into further detail here (as to not give away too many things about the film), but suffice to say, that there are a LOT of monologues about sex, life and death, and the film feels VERY "French" (and not necessarily in a good way, mind you).

It reminded me of a mixture between Fassbender's "Querelle" (with the sexual themes and colorful studio-backgrounds), and some old avant-garde art-porn from the 1980s. I'm not really into this kind of thing, so that's why I didn't rate it very highly. It's mostly just loooong speeches about everything and nothing, set to a backdrop of great music by the band M83, and after a while it gets quite tedious and dull. But hey, if you're into this sort of thing, you'll probably love it to death!

A famous footballer cast in a French experiment. A party of sorts with a tension that is deliberately burdened by constructed pretense to tease the viewer into the figure of the voyeur, which is the only figure not figured in the cast of party invitees. Those include Cantona as 'the stallion' for example, invited to the party on strength of the stallion's famed endowment. Alongside others like 'the star', the teen', all called to the event for their various fantasies about relationship and sex to mix and play out, to mutual disillusionment and perhaps, fulfillment. In the end, none of it quite comes together, but perhaps that was director Yann Gonzalez's intention all along. But one is left haunted by the lighting, the interplay of black and white, of shadows, of movement and voice.

I love French cinema, and this is semi-porno, totally pretentious rubbish. I have no desire to give away spoilers, but only to say that the monologues would be better suited to a third rate play or novel. Despite the overkill of beautiful apartment, beautiful lighting and use of colour ( someone compared this to Fassbinder. This is an insult to Fassbinder and especially to his great vision of Jean Genet's ' Querelle ' ) this is empty and devoid of interest. The transvestite maid was typical of French cinema of a certain period, badly acted and lacking in any way a sense of sexual fluidity. A man in bad drag is a man in bad drag, and this made ' La Cage aux Folles look a masterpiece! Pretty boys are just pretty boys when they cannot act, and the over acting of the final speech and the tears in the teen's eyes made me want to cry that a 21st century French film could be this bad. If there was a zero this would get one. Anyone who loves cinema please return to Bresson, Rohmer and films like ' Theo and Hugo ' and ' Sauvage ' for real complexity, for real visual truth and in the latter two films sexual truth.

This is a movie that cannot be seen with the eyes of evasion. It is a movie that needs to be watch it with the eyes of the soul as well as the physical eyes, without prejudgments, and without taboos. In this film there is a naive and innocent eternal love, that needs to be fed with lust like vampires need to be fed by blood. On the other hand there is a world with lack of satisfaction, a world of loneliness and a life that has just started to open to the complicated world. The oneiric images are intermingled with fantasies and reality, and it goes slowly, until its climax. It is also a simple movie yet it is not. I like letting myself be taken where the director means to take the public. I find this film special and not liked by everyone. It makes you stop and feel all that happens in the characters lives. In our times, this movie has echoes from the silent movies, and the photography is spectacular, at times eerie and others, sublime and beautiful. It makes you feel in a dream at times, as if I had been in it as well. Strange, beautifully portrayed by all actors and actresses, I especially note the work by Kate Moran, Beatrice Dalle, Alain Fabien Delon and Fabienne Babe, although the rest of the cast is great. Dalle is very credible, Moran has moments of deep emotion that trespass the screen, Alain Fabien Delon is a tender heart in this film and his final scene very well defined, and Babe has great expressions in her role. The director is Yann Gonzalez and it is the first time that I see his work. I think he wanted this film to be deep yet naive at the same time. The fetish scenes are important to show the characters inner souls. Those that love the Art of the Seventh Art, may consider to try this one.