Toute une nuit

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.

The night as blank canvas where people trace impulsive paths with their bodies, Chantal has twice before captivated me with something like this. She is a gentle soul, gentle in the distance from which she views, alert to the hum of transience. Once more she gives us yearning in faint orbits.

It's pure listless summer night this one, one of the most atmospheric works I've found. Life for her is woven from breath and space, the moment that fleets before we can hold onto. She captures marvelous moments here; my favorites show a little girl rushing down the stairs and out the house as lovers embrace in the street, a young couple eloping in the night from a veranda door.

She begins to lose me when it's about no life in particular. Jeanne Dielman and Anna's Meetings were embodied in a woman who wonders and waits as she makes her way. Here we follow a dozen people through a hot summer night in the city. They come and go from places, wait for someone, pursue or leave each other in the street. Utterances are few, we infer from glances and bodies. Embrace or the urge to escape from embrace that has grown tired is the recurring pattern.

It's even more abstract and sensory than before. Purely on a moment- by-moment basis it's marvelous work. But sprawling as we do, not knowing these people as more than figures going to and from, it becomes choreographed performance, a study of form rather than journey that cuts through it. Most likely this was the specific intention. It brought to mind Pina Bausch and her dances of impulse painting itself with bodies. I see that she would make a film on Pina soon after.

It's a very tender balance anyway. You want - as Ozu did early on - to sift through the clamor of life to find those moments that lay bare the heart that minds, the body that is kept awake at nights, but I would rather have it reflected back in a way that tethers me to sleepless nights I've known, as a consciousness that inhabits a world that surrounds, which is how we know the world. It always comes back to having this one body, and to land in brief moments of different lives, the tethers grow lax and it moves to an omniscient view, a formal visit.

But this is Chantal choreographing sketches on life as all this merry-go-round, viewers who are interested in form will have a ball.

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.

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.

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