Anna is tired. Soon her shift at an emergency call center will be over. A little on autopilot, she picks up. On the line: Aly, a young woman who got the wrong number and who thinks she’s telling her sister about her evening from the car of the guy who gave her a lift. However, Anna soon understands that Aly is indeed speaking to her and that she is pretending to speak to her sister in order not to arouse the driver’s suspicions. Named Dary, the latter displays a worrying appearance… Thanks to Anna, a roadblock is erected and Dary is arrested. Shaken, Aly accuses him of rape. In Leave the nightDelphine Girard interweaves with intelligence and sensitivity various revealing perspectives in the aftermath of the crime.
The young Belgian filmmaker, born in Quebec, alternates the points of view of the victim in a state of shock, Aly, of the aggressor who denies, Dary, and of the ally that Anna becomes. In her script, as fine as it is detailed (and awarded at Cinemania, where the film also won the Marc-André-Lussier Jury Prize), Delphine Girard does not, however, limit herself to these three experiences.
In fact, as the legal process begins, Aly goes from discouragement to frustration. During the deposition, a sequence that the filmmaker explained to us in an interview to have been based on her research within the police force, Aly finds himself in a defensive position, of justification. We don’t blame the victim, but almost.
And there is the merciless statistical reality, which adds to the trauma: in a scenario like this, either “she says that, he says that”, the chances of the case being heard are slim.
Through the character of Aly, Delphine Girard explores the narrow workings of an outdated justice system.
Denial mechanisms
For his part, Dary tries to get his life back to normal, reiterating to his mother, Laurence, that Aly is lying. To be so convincing, he must be convinced…
The psychological profile with which Delphine Girard imparts this character is very credible. Dary is not a movie monster: he is an ordinary young man who has already had acts of bravery (he is a firefighter), who is a good son… The fact remains that after a trip to box, he raped Aly, because he refused to hear “no”, which she nevertheless repeated.
And through this character, Delphine Girard deconstructs the mechanisms of denial.
Which leaves Anna, through whom we enter the story. The filmmaker returns to her punctually, through a personal investigation to trace Aly. This is because Anna cannot forget this woman whom she has heard, but never seen, and whose terror she has perceived in veiled words.
Unfortunately, since the film focuses on the respective daily lives of Aly and Dary, that of Anna seems flat in comparison; as imposed in the frame. That being said, once contact between the two women is re-established, their exchanges and sharing are among the best moments of the film. In short, it’s upstream that it lacks organicity.
Infinite empathy
When directing, Delphine Girard favors an unvarnished approach to circumstances. In that there is neither visual fluff nor staging effect. With this stripped-down form, the filmmaker enhances the factual, authentic dimension of the background.
The nervous camera knows how to capture the tension between two characters in medium and wide shots, the image revealing more than the words (the initial scenes between Dary and his mother). The director uses the close-up just as well, especially when she chooses to stay on the face of the character who listens, receives or accepts a word (Aly facing the policewoman; Laurence facing her son, etc.), rather than on the character who speaks.
Which characters are played with accuracy at every moment by the three main performers – Veerle Baetens, Selma Alaoui, Guillaume Duhesme -, who reprise the roles they created in the short film by Delphine Girard at the origin of this first feature . Without forgetting Anne Dorval, poignant as the mother of the attacker: the confession scene gives rise to an emotional discharge that hits right in the heart.
The result is a very human, very harsh film, but whose painful dimension is transcended by infinite empathy.