Médecin de nuit

Vincent Macaigne gives here one, if not, of his best performances ever. So realistic and dark, gloomy and entertaining, where characters seem so real. French movie style at its damn peak. Acting at the top, so the directing and screenplay too. Film noir? Hmmm, at least a noir drama, but there is no criminal element here, nor real. A few years ago, there was MEDECIN DE CAMPAGNE, starring François Cluzet, it was far less downbeat but not less interesting. The settings were not the same and so the characters. It could have been a kind of TAXI DRIVER but on the night doctor fashion instead of cab. It explores the routine burden of a physician, as it also could be for a beat cop, a fireman, with of course the unavoidable Paris by night atmosphere. Please don't miss it.

A humanitarian doctor in Paris works as a "night doctor" (a dispatcher sends him on home visits to patient overnight to provide urgent care). Meanwhile he moonlights writing Subutex scrips for desperate addicts, providing harm reduction. This puts him in contact with a criminal underworld, and moral and ethical quandaries begin to mount. All done over the course of night.

Watched this as a sort of default choice very late one night and woke up fast due to its brilliant headfirst dive into harsh realities. Vincent Macaigne's performance is a revelation --flat out wonderful as a complex man leading a very layered, endlessly stressful life due to his choices to provide "care". Seemingly crazy scenarios of house calls in stressful contexts--but reality isn't nice and neat so who can take issue with such? A couple other reviews discuss noir elements far better than I can for a French film--which generally outclass anything from Hollywood. Why so few reviews? Perhaps because IMDb is so English language orientated? Not even subtitles for the single trailer. So what. If I can find this film online so can anyone else searching for a seriously satisfying drama dealing with the issues of providing health care for very challenging patients.

"Médecin de nuit" (The Night Doctor), co-written and directed by Elie Wajeman ("Aliyah", "The Anarchists"), filmed in Paris at the turn of 2019 and 2020, checks all the boxes of the film noir genre: a city at night, individuals at the margins of society, either by choice or left behind by the system (drug addicts, thugs and other traffickers, homeless or destitute underdogs), violence erupting at regular intervals, a hero (Mickaël, the night doctor of the title) somewhat in trouble with the law struggling against forces beyond him, including a (could-be) femme fatale (Sofia, Mickaël's ambiguous mistress) and a seductive but devious villain.

Naturally, gathering all the ingredients of a recipe does not mean that the dish will be successful, one has to accommodate them the right way. Judging by the result, Elie Wajeman has proved up to the task. The cook sure did not spoil the broth!

First things first, for Wajeman, just like Richard Bohringer, "A City is Beautiful at Night", an aesthetic taste that he manages (with the competent assistance of cinematographer David Chizallet) to translate on the wide screen, the cold ugliness of the areas the doctor drives through being advantageously replaced by the warm glow of all kinds of lights, fixed or changing (red lights, neon signs, lit windows, etc.) Secondly, as a writer (Wajeman started writing the script with Agnès Feuvre but completed it alone), the director shows an aptitude (required for this kind of film) to spare his effects, to play with the unexpected, to sustain the interest until the denouement: tension, threats and twists duly pervade the plot. Moreover, by compressing the action into a period of less than 24 hours and a running time of 82 minutes, Wajeman further enhances the dramatic potential of his story, constantly varying according to the moments from anecdotal, daily or amused to dramatic, even tragic, through a whole range of intermediate tonalities For his part, he actor Vincent Macaigne is not for nothing in this success: his unfailing investment in his character added to his natural talent give a flawless consistency to the whole thing. It is impressive to see him change without apparent transition from "holy man" to "thick brute", from worn out man to consoler of those who suffer.

Last but not least, as in the best films noirs, the author is not content to illustrate the crime plot, he places it in the richer framework of psychological study, sociological observation and documentary, Thus we will witness the marital crisis that pits Mickaël and his wife Sacha against each other.

Thus we will discover what is hidden inside these impersonal buildings housing modest beings in modest districts.

Thus we will see how a night doctor works (the consultation scenes seem to come out of reality as if filmed by a hidden camera.) At the time of the final sequence, of great dramatic power, you will be completely shaken. "The Night Doctor" will not disappear instantly from your memory.

Esthetically the noir atmosphere is well done.

But I have to say the characters from main to supporting are quite shallow almost two dimensional. There is a superficiality in the drawing of the relationships as well as major inexplicable drop offs in the narrative as if some parts of this film were accidently lopped off in the editing wrong. I understand there was some kind of conflict with the two writers, with one quitting. Perhaps that is the explanation.

In short, see well crafted noir atmosphere, very good directing and cinematography, and can tolerate narrative problems, this will be entertaining.