Review: ‘Eat the Night’ delivers a sucker punch ending
Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel’s sophomore effort goes for the jugular.
Directors Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel hook you into our collective desperation for human connection with their second feature. Eat the Night mixes virtual reality and real life into a stunning slice of modern existence. Through social media and online gaming, we all wear masks to conceal the most authentic parts of who we are. Instead, we swap what people think will like and toss the rest. With the film’s reality-hopping structure, Piggi and Vinel’s sophomore effort explores relationships, the disjointed nature of our reality, and how we seek refuge in digital spaces.
Apolline (Lila Gueneau) is obsessed with the game Darknoon. She’s been playing it for nine years and immersed herself entirely in a fictional world where she can be whoever she wants to be. Her big brother Pablo (Théo Cholbi) introduced her to the throat-slashing territory domination game – but he’s ready to move on. When game developers announce the end of Darknoon, Apoline struggles not only to understand their reasoning but cope with the closing of a chapter. It’s like her life is ending.
Meanwhile, Pablo deals drugs to make ends meet, but growing tensions with a rival drug gang threaten his way of life. He eventually meets Night (Erwan Kepoa Falé), who he convinces to go into business with him. They eventually become lovers and spend their every waking moment together, thus alienating Apoline. When she needs her brother the most, he grows distant and preoccupied. Life gets in the way sometimes, lending to the film’s thesis about connection and desperation to be loved.
Poggi and Vinel, in collaboration with cinematographer Raphaël Vandenbussche, create colors, textures, and camera angles that mimic the characters and the inevitable downward spiral. As Night and Pablo become embroiled in a dangerous game, their lives are put on the chopping block, and it’s only a matter of time before the rival gang members come knocking. Doused in style, Eat the Night makes mood and atmosphere as important as the story arc – erupting into splashes of dreamy psychological swirls and an emotional backbone.
Eat the Night is as sensual as it is agonizingly grim. When relationships fracture, it’s difficult to repair them – leaving brittle, discarded pieces and no hope to speak of. Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel invite you into a magnetizing world, owed largely to Cholbi and Falé’s emotionally fraught performances, and you get a peak into two tragic lives. A devastating watch, Eat the Night just might surprise you.
Eat the Night opens tonight for a brief limited theatrical run.
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