Presented at the Cannes Film Festival last May, the new film by actor and director Alex Lutz will be released in theaters on Wednesday. It tells of a nocturnal encounter between two strangers in the streets of Paris.
It all starts with an almost banal scene in the Paris metro. When the train arrives on the platform, a woman rushes into the crowded car. She violently jostles a passenger who makes it clear to her that she could have apologized. A long verbal sparring ensued between the two individuals. “Are you from the tone police?”, throws the woman in a hurry in front of the other passengers. It could have ended there. The sequel will continue in a photo booth where we find them making love. The meeting will last one night. Third feature film by Alex Lutz, co-written with Karin Viard, A night was presented at the last Cannes Film Festival in the Un certain regard selection. It hits theaters Wednesday, July 5.
A runaway
He is Aymeric (Alex Lutz). She is Nathalie (Karin Viard). Seemingly, they’re all opposites: she’s not really his “type” and she quickly tells him that it’s going to end there. She has a family, too. But in the end, their nocturnal stroll will bring them to know each other and bring back the candor of their 20s.
Built like a mille-feuille thanks to a very fine production (yet made in just 14 days of shooting), the film oscillates between comedy and drama. “We absolutely wanted to shoot in a short time, to create a film in danger in its making, I wanted the urgency to be perceptible on the screen”, says Alex Lutz.
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Karin Viard and Alex Lutz, luminous with accuracy and complicity, offer beautiful moments of grace, laughter and tenderness. There are moved looks, silences, fragile smiles, assumed desires and intimate confessions. During this night, everything is permitted. An all-too-rare parenthesis that leaves room for things we dare not say, things we dare not do. “We are there, both of us, a little recreation, a little escape”, launches Aymeric.
The game of love and chance
In the middle of several very removed scenes, others, slower and more talkative, could discourage the spectators eager for action or comedy. Sitting on a bench on the banks of the Seine, Nathalie and Aymeric talk, theorize about desire, love, chemistry, availability, nostalgia for first times, and indulge as one can only do with a unknown or very close. “To be well is to be at peace, to be whole”, says Aymeric.
In this third film, Alex Lutz does not hesitate to integrate dreamlike and poetic passages. There is playfulness, fantasy, but also a lot of melancholy. “The couple is above all a human experience. It is a construction site in permanent danger, and that is what makes it exciting and beautiful”, explains Alex Lutz. Dotted with clues throughout the story, this fleeting encounter will reveal heavy secrets that the characters carry. If the romantic encounter has been repeatedly narrated in the cinema, we come out of ‘A night as in a dream, trying to pick up each piece.
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The sheet
Gender : drama
Director : Alex Lutz
Actors: Alex Lutz, Karin Viard, Jerome Pouly
Country : France
Distributer : Studiocanal
Duration : 1h30
Exit : July 5, 2023
Synopsis : Paris, crowded metro, an evening like any other.
A woman pushes a man, they argue. Very quickly, the electric current turns… into burning desire. The two strangers get out of the train and make love in the cabin of a photo booth.
The night now belongs to them.
In this Paris of deserted streets, stretched hours, will we have to say goodbye?