intrigue and passion in an ambitious first film

In her first feature film, Delphine Girard films with substance the ambiguity of male-female relationships. An irreversible incommunicability?

Screenwriter and director, Delphine Girard starts from a police scenario to deal with a societal subject, through an event, a woman’s call to the police. The receptionist will carry out her own investigation and find herself with the protagonists, obsessed by the events of a night from which they seek to escape.

First film, Leave the nightvery careful in its frames and lighting, asks questions on a hot topic, from Wednesday April 10 in theaters.

haunting night

While driving on a country road, a woman calls the police station, making the driver believe she is calling her sister. On the other end of the line, Anna (Veerle Baetens) understands that she feels threatened and launches an arrest. Dary (Guillaume Duhesme) is arrested, while Aly (Selma Alaoui), the complainant, and Anna seem caught in a spiral that overwhelms them, unable to free themselves from the analysis of the events of a haunting night.

The temporality of Leave the night is in its title. It is not, however, a nocturnal film, its time being that of the memory of a night which invades the day, until it no longer leaves it. Delphine Girard follows, as an observer, the sequence of more or less trivial events, subject to interpretation, even changing, in any case difficult to reduce to a Manichean solution. The author and director follows the adage of the best films, consisting of not giving answers, but asking the right questions.

His investigator finds himself in the Hitchcockian position of the average character thrown into an exceptional situation. The extraordinary nature of the situation is not necessarily spectacular; it just needs to stand out intensely from the initial situation thanks to the relaunch of the plot. From receptionist, Anna therefore becomes an investigator, which makes her a typical character in the films of the master of suspense, her blondeness being a nod to Tippi Hedren, Kim Novak and other Grace Kelly.

Leave the night, with a very beautiful title, charm by a shift of the genre film towards the deciphering of human relationships, in this case those between Anna and Dary reciprocally, steeped in desires, frustrations, conditioning, influences, guilt and of fears. The list is not exhaustive. Delphine Girard films them with careful cinematography in her frames and very harmonious lighting, with dominant night blues, even in broad daylight. Intriguing like a thriller, intelligent like a documentary.

The sheet

Gender : Crime/Drama
Director : Delphine Girard
Actors: Selma Alaoui, Veerle Baetens, Guillaume Duhesme
Country : Canada/Belgium/France
Duration : 1h48
Exit : 10 April 2024
Distributer : Top and Short

Synopsis: One night, a woman in danger calls the police. Anna takes the call. A man is arrested. The weeks pass, justice searches for evidence, Aly, Anna and Dary face the echoes of that night that they cannot leave behind.