Day and Night (2010) User Reviews

Two woman, different like day and night, tangle themselves up in a dangerous game of sex, money and the false assumption that they are able to control the game.

[schnoedewind · 5/10 · 15 February 2012]

Lea (Anna Rot) and Hanna (Magdalena Kronschläger) are students in Wien, Austria. They decide to try prostitution to make some easy money. The pact between the two of them says, that they will stop with it as soon as one of them wants to stop selling her body.

While Hanna is shy, serious and reserved, Lea is open, sexy and always smoking. For Lea, everything is just a game. She takes life, sex and money easily. You soon get the feeling that Lea is the strong one in their friendship, she makes the decisions and has a little power over Hanna. It is no surprise, that the first impression is not always the right one.

For a while, it seems like the plan of making money in an easy way is working out. But only for a while. What started as a funny game, gets serious and ends in a disaster for everyone.

The movie cannot hold, what it promises in the beginning. The story is too predictable and too shallow for me. It does not get under the surface. Only scratches on it a little.

The whole atmosphere is cold. All the human abysses you sense are presented in a cool way. It is hard for me to find a person to feel with, because I do not like all of them very much. The characters are strangely plain and I can't find much of myself in them.

Not much there besides emptiness

[keenast · 1/10 · 27 March 2016]

A story done a a thousand times, 2 young women moonlighting as prostitutes. That happens a lot in real life and it is also a common fantasy. Unfortunately though our 2 heroes in this film don't bring much to the game. It's not the actors faults (well it is too) it's mostly a fault of the script that is amazingly empty, one might call it a quickie: no emotions involved, let's get over it.

But then, something like that doesn't work as a movie. Making a film, any film, is a laborious thing to do that takes many months and sometimes years out of one's life. Doing that on the premise of a bland and uninteresting script and story line is wasting everybody's time.

So we're having two 'students' - and calling them 'students' one would at least expect some kind of intelligence, some thoughtfulness, but that doesn't happen. The one girl (Anna Rot) constantly giggles no matter what, the other one (Magdalena Kronschläger) seems to be a slightly deeper character but there's only hints of a more complex inner life, not enough by far to make anything out of it.

There is another character in this film, the 'pimp', written and acted so colorless that he is forgotten the second he is off screen. He shall rename nameless.

Then we have the 'clients' of our wannabe prostitues. Again lifeless people with no real personality - cheesy and full of (movie) cliché.

In the end this film is not worth watching. It's all empty calories.

Felt relatively empty to me

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 1 December 2016]

"Tag und Nacht" or "Day and Night" is an Austrian German-language film from 2010, which means it had its 5th anniversary last year. At this point, it is probably the most known work by director and co-writer Sabine Derflinger. The two lead actresses are Anna Rot and Magdalena Kronschläger and we see their characters prostitute themselves for pretty much the entire movie that runs 95 minutes approximately by the way. I cannot say I am familiar with either of the two or any of the supporting cast except Martin Brambach who appeared nude in quite a few films back then it seems. I like him as an actor and he is a bit of a scene stealer too, but his role is really too unimportant eventually to make up for all the mediocrity. The only other positive aspect during these slightly over 90 minutes were maybe Rot's pretty hot looks and you see everything from her in terms of nudity. People who prefer blondes, may go for Kronschläger instead. But this is nothing one should aim for really when making a story-focused film like this one here. Despite all the drama and sometimes even tragedy, I never cared a lot for any of the two prostitutes to be honest. It does not make an impact on an emotional level at all for me and this is also one of the main reasons (another one would be that all the male characters are pretty much interchangeable and offer zero depth) why I cannot give this film a higher rating. Thumbs down and I do not recommend the watch.

Weak

[grantss · 4/10 · 7 December 2019]

Had potential, but the subject has been covered before, and this doesn't shed any new light on the matter. Some interesting moments, but that's about it.

Disappointing.

Devastatingly disturbing

[jwbleonard · 8/10 · 3 October 2020]

It is true this story has been done before. Still the acting makes it worth watching.

Looking for a reason

[kein_Kenner · 2/10 · 9 November 2021]

If the purpose of this movie was to show that sex for pay is demeaning and unappealing, it succeeded. But that seems an unambitious goal. It seems like the relationship between Lea and Hanna should be the main theme to be developed, but we never get a real sense of what the relationship is actually about. How deeply do they care for each other? Why? The movie provides no grounding in their relationship ante, so the effects of their actions land in a vacuum.

There is an interesting scene where the more adventurous of the two declines to engage in a sex act that the less adventurous one is willing to perform. This offers an opportunity to explore their damaged sense of boundaries. . .but the opportunity is squandered. I guess there was a need to proceed to a graphic depiction of the next demeaning job.

I guess I can give it marks for consistency: it ends as shallowly as it begins.