Night doctor | Vibrant portrait of nocturnal wildlife ★★★½

There are those films that we feel would hold up a little worse without the presence of the actor playing the protagonist on whom the story is based. This is the case of this night doctor, whose success is largely due to the performance of Vincent Macaigne. The actor is also in the running for the Césars in the category of best actor, a fully deserved distinction.

Marc-Andre Lussier
The Press

In this third feature film by Elie Wajeman (Aliyah, The anarchists), the one we saw last year in The things we say, the things we do, by Emmanuel Mouret, abandons the type of lovelorn character that has often been entrusted to him in the cinema. This time he slips into the skin of a man torn from within, as capable of gentleness and compassion as of violence.

Visibly inspired by 1970s American film noir – MeanStreets in the lead –, also surveying the same mysteries as James Gray (The Yards, We Own the Night), Elie Wajeman tells the story of Mikaël, an on-call doctor who works at night. This choice of character allows him to deploy his story on several axes. Between home visits to patients who have called urgently, Mikaël, who has also won the trust of the marginalized and the left behind, also lives a lot on the street.

Prescribing prescriptions to cure the evil of living in nocturnal fauna, also involved in illicit drug trafficking orchestrated by his pharmacist cousin (Pio Marmaï), Mikaël gives himself up to the night to settle his affairs and get his life back in hand. His serious existential crisis also stems from the ultimatum given to him by his wife (Sarah Le Picard), despite all the love they feel for each other, and also the distances that a woman seems to want to take. (Sara Giraudeau) with whom he has an affair. To top it off, some unsavory guys start chasing him…

A universe of cinema

Wajeman takes the gamble of mixing the intimate and the social by drawing the portrait of a man whose humanist convictions are not only put to the test of the system, but also command a moral code that he himself has trouble. to honor.

With great finesse and subtlety, Vincent Macaigne translates the many facets of a man also confronted with the law of the street. The gentle and benevolent gaze of the doctor in the leather coat can thus give way to more violent impulses, just to survive in an environment where human relations are harsher.

While maintaining a concern for realism, the filmmaker clearly offers here a universe of cinema. Rich in atmospheres, night doctor also stands out thanks to well-assumed artistic choices, splendid cinematography (images by David Chizallet), and districts of Paris that are not often seen in the cinema.

night doctor is offered on the Cinéma du Parc platform, as well as on Crave/Super Ecran.

Drama

night doctor

Elie Wajeman

With Vincent Macaigne, Pio Marmaï, Sara Giraudeau

1:22 a.m.

★★★½