Toute une nuit

This was a little special. "Toute Une Nuit" ("A Whole Night") hyperlinks several characters during a long night in Brussels, dealing with their love affairs, longings for their distant loved ones, or romantic moments and sometimes some separations and some new encounters. Chantal Akerman reveals through those small fragments and small particles of life little things that seem essential in relationships, like they're mandatory. If you ever been involved with someone, you'll go through all the stages presented here: dancing together, run into your loved ones arms, the small talks, the kisses, the disorientation of many lonely nights when the other one is not around and so on.

In an almost wordless and very quiet experience, it's up to us to imagine what goes through the characters' mind and their psyche. When the words aren't needed sometimes is easier (and more fascinating) to form a whole scenario. In the most funniest sequence, a love triangle, formed by two men and one woman, decide to ignore each other at a restaurant and you already get the sense that choices must be made, they aren't satisfied with the current situation. Next thing you know, one of the guys ask "Who are you leaving with tonight?". No answer is given, then the trio part different ways. The other couples in the film are less complicated but they have their fair share of obstacles, pleasant moments.

While the idea seems interesting, it's execution is tiring and poor. There's far too many characters to track down, and the voyeuristic look from the distance strangely captured by an affected cinematography hurts the experience. The director, however, is authentic with her love observations almost as if making a documentary on the stages of romance without using clichéd formulas, or making us attached to just one story (not all of them are interesting but they work their way out to make a whole picture). With the silence, the darkness comes the light of reflection, we are bound to perceive love in a different perspective. It's constantly made up of saying 'I Love You' all the time, it's more about gestures, intentions, actions, even when the other one is not around and even then you might find it difficult to say what's need to be said (beautifully presented with the worried guy who finds it extremely hard to write a letter to his boyfriend, who just walked through the door, going on a trip). It's in the trying, and it's on the connection made. For all the little things, "A Whole Night" overcomes its problems and becomes an enjoyable picture. Perfect for a silent night. 6/10

Toute une nuit (1982) ("All Night Long") was written and directed by Chantal Akerman. Akerman is one of my favorite directors, but she's not at her best in this film.

The basic plot is a series of pairings that take place during a warm night in Brussels. Some of the characters live in the same building, but I don't think any couple interacts with any other couple in the movie.

The film is dark, and the couples are not highly attractive. I have to admit that the action didn't fly by--it was a long 80 minutes.

On the other hand, Akerman has the courage to stay with a scene when other directors would cut away. Better still, she often continues the scene when the principal actors have left the frame. It's only then that the viewer discovers the characters that have been literally and figuratively in the background. Their stories might be as interesting as the stories we are following. Maybe they'll be in Akerman's next film. Maybe she's already made that film, and I just don't know it.

According to Cognitive Relativism and Radical Constructivism, objects do not exist outside of our perception. According to these metaphysical theories, we therefore create the world by aid of our senses, the same world that we perceive, according to Trancendentalism, because it has its own reality independent of our perception. In a world that follows the lines of Cognitive Realism, everything is sign, the world is no longer divided in presenting objects on the one side and representing signs on the other side: We can only perceive signs – the world is a pure semiotic one. In such a solipsist world, there is no real distinction between outside and inside, because the semiotic cosmos is closed by the capability of our perception. Cognitive Relativism thus explains satisfactorily, why we can imagine "unreal" objects like dragons, mermaids or unicorns (although perhaps nobody ever has seen them in the "real" world): They are created by our senses, they are – as signs – no more and no less "real" than trees, beer glasses or cars.

The relativism of the outside and inside is the basic topic of Chantal Akerman's movie "Toute une nuit": The director presents in 23 fragments couples whose relationships are centered outside or inside of doors and windows. According to Gaston Bachelard, the door is "the cosmos of half-openness": Doors can be open or closed, they mark the difference between outside and inside, and between are the thresholds. But doors normally do not have transparency, windows, however, do: they can be closed, but one can watch from the inside to the outside or vice versa. In abolishing the transparency by closing the curtains, they turn into doors. From this standpoint, mirrors cheat on windows, because they are not transparent.

In concentrating on the little spaces outside or inside of doors, we see only fragments of the lives of these couples: The half-openness does not let us decide which are the reasons of their separating, their being together or their reconciling: this decisions, too, stay half-open. But this movie does not only show fragments, it is a fragment of fragments itself, hence auto-logical. And this auto-logy goes along with the semiotic character of solipsist relativism: There are only certain types of signs, in which all reality can be coded, therefore, signs survive the reality (as perceived by our senses) only with loss of parts of quality. Signs are thus fragments of reality, which is thinned by our perception. Famous names of French philosophy such as Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Paul Virilio are the fathers and mothers of the metaphysical background of "Toute une nuit" – a film which is therefore one of these movies that are not made for everybody.

The fore-mentioned Paul Virilio delivered also the theoretical background of the high-speed with which Chantal Akerman presents her fragments: Since signs are the remainders of quality that can be perceived after having been filtered from reality by our perception, the quantitative aspects are passing the qualitative ones. But this is good so: Franz Kafka wrote that everybody who would be capable of perceiving everything, would be dead instantly. The quantity of speed induced by our senses, the loss of quality induced by signs and the consolation given us by Cognitive Relativism that there are no menacing objects independent (and thus outside of control) of our senses turn out to be life-preserving.

But the most important question that arises is: What, if this fragmentary character of our life is only introduced by Aristotelian logic, in which there is only space for one subject – an "I" or a "thou", but not for both? In this case, Aristotelian logic must be replaced by a multi-valued logic which can take care of the disturbing fact that a "thou" is a "I" and thus a subject from its own standpoint, but an object from the standpoint of any other "I": The borders between subject and object are getting fluid, and thus contradict Aristotelian logic. Could it thus be that life is only fragmentary because all our activities are based on a fragmentary logic?

Akerman's Toute une nuit is a collection of vignettes depicting the fancies and dramatic moments of a number of people throughout one summer night. The film has little dialogue and relies on a remarkable series of contrasts for effect: a sultry night of deep, often painful depictions of passion visualized in a stark and grainy manner against the backdrop of a spiritless, bland Brussels.

Perhaps the film's greatest strength is the irony of richness in its seemingly static depiction. Each of the pictures is beautifully ephemeral, usually lasting no more than one action, movement, or event. They allow no real presentation of characters, but nonetheless show each 'character' in a special and unique way. At the end, it is possible to define each of these individuals distinctly from the careful balance of motions, occasional dialogue, and atmosphere in which they were presented.

For those dependent on (or at least accustomed to) an integrated style of narrative giving greater importance to dialogue, this can be a difficult film to watch. And for what one would expect for it to compensate in subtlety, it is often dry. It is well orchestrated nonetheless, a satisfying arc of characters and their interactions for a careful viewer.

Akerman here show 50-odd stories, but only picks the most melodramatic moment in each story, moments of meeting, parting, longing, and despair. The film is brilliantly filmed, using a still camera for the most part. There are twenty-three camera movements, all but one simple pans and tilts. The film is funny and intellectually satisfying. Viewers need to give it a chance, for it does not announce its intentions, and those accustomed to the usual narrative will find it difficult to get into the film. It is, however, well worth the effort. A very great film indeed.