Very French! This film embraces the physical reality of living just as conspicuously as American films avoid it. The film centers on five young adults: Lucie, her bisexual brother Pierre, and their friends Nicolas, Sebastien and Baptiste. The young men play together in a band and enjoy rocking local audiences. The viewer has to pay attention - the film is part murder mystery and follows Lucie's thoughts in the form of flashbacks. I'd recommend watching it twice: first for immersion and second for appreciation and understanding.
In terms of cinematography, this movie is beautiful - featuring sumptuous, rich color. The beautiful actors add to the appeal, but other reviewers have made slightly too much of their attractiveness. I could go to my local shopping mall on a busy night and find five young adults as physically fit and attractive as the main actors in "Chacun sa nuit." The difference is in the U.S. - with its current of quirky religious extremism, its tendency towards irrational hysteria, and its servile pandering to pressure groups - it would be extremely difficult to craft a movie as honest and authentic as "Chacun sa nuit." (It is worth noting that this film is based on real events.) Let's just say the French are often very forthright in depicting the physical beauty that is the special province of young adulthood, and they reveal it without censorship or hand-wringing. All the nudity is positive in tone.
Because of our strong vein of Puritanical dualism, Americans often make films that pit the soul and body (or two characters representing soul and body) in a battle against each other. Have you ever noticed how many U.S. films feature a pitched showdown between an impossibly good character and an impossibly bad character? French films, on the other hand, often feature the soul and body complementing and informing each other - in effect going off to explore together. This often makes it easier for French film-makers to celebrate and savor life in their movies - including accepting the sexual aspects of living. Also, there is no aversion to sorrow.
The relationships here are not Disney-fied, rather they are intense and intimate. Pierre and Lucie as brother and sister are devoted to each other; they stop a millimeter short of full-blown incest. Some of the dialog between the two comes perilously close to being pretentious. But everything is incredibly poignant to the point where you almost feel you could reach out to the screen and touch them.
But all is not rainbows, poetry and love-making in provincial France. Someone hustles for money on the side and there is a murder - seediness and iniquity thereby enter in. The solution to the murder implies what may be an unanswerable series of questions:
1) Does untrammeled freedom lead to the total evaporation of morals?
2) Is there an extreme Puritan inside all of us demanding that we "punish" ourselves and others for celebrating freedom, welcoming sexual joy, and savoring life?
3) Could an overzealous desire for freedom and an internalized pious tyrant be toxic co-conspirators paving the way to ruin?
"Chacun sa nuit" is a film to indulge in - like a bottle of Bordeaux with a sirloin roast.
In terms of cinematography, this movie is beautiful - featuring sumptuous, rich color. The beautiful actors add to the appeal, but other reviewers have made slightly too much of their attractiveness. I could go to my local shopping mall on a busy night and find five young adults as physically fit and attractive as the main actors in "Chacun sa nuit." The difference is in the U.S. - with its current of quirky religious extremism, its tendency towards irrational hysteria, and its servile pandering to pressure groups - it would be extremely difficult to craft a movie as honest and authentic as "Chacun sa nuit." (It is worth noting that this film is based on real events.) Let's just say the French are often very forthright in depicting the physical beauty that is the special province of young adulthood, and they reveal it without censorship or hand-wringing. All the nudity is positive in tone.
Because of our strong vein of Puritanical dualism, Americans often make films that pit the soul and body (or two characters representing soul and body) in a battle against each other. Have you ever noticed how many U.S. films feature a pitched showdown between an impossibly good character and an impossibly bad character? French films, on the other hand, often feature the soul and body complementing and informing each other - in effect going off to explore together. This often makes it easier for French film-makers to celebrate and savor life in their movies - including accepting the sexual aspects of living. Also, there is no aversion to sorrow.
The relationships here are not Disney-fied, rather they are intense and intimate. Pierre and Lucie as brother and sister are devoted to each other; they stop a millimeter short of full-blown incest. Some of the dialog between the two comes perilously close to being pretentious. But everything is incredibly poignant to the point where you almost feel you could reach out to the screen and touch them.
But all is not rainbows, poetry and love-making in provincial France. Someone hustles for money on the side and there is a murder - seediness and iniquity thereby enter in. The solution to the murder implies what may be an unanswerable series of questions:
1) Does untrammeled freedom lead to the total evaporation of morals?
2) Is there an extreme Puritan inside all of us demanding that we "punish" ourselves and others for celebrating freedom, welcoming sexual joy, and savoring life?
3) Could an overzealous desire for freedom and an internalized pious tyrant be toxic co-conspirators paving the way to ruin?
"Chacun sa nuit" is a film to indulge in - like a bottle of Bordeaux with a sirloin roast.