DMovies - Your platform for thought-provoking cinema

Night (Natt)

Director - Mona J. Hoel - 2022

"Thoroughly sanitised movie"
A horrible disease befalls the mother of two small children, sending her on a quest to get a divorce before she dies - extremely clumsy Norwegian drama premieres at the 26th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

QUICK SNAP: TALLINN

The doctor drops the bombshell in the very first scene: Emma (Guri Glans) has a highly aggressive lymphoma and less than three months to live. She could fall sick in a few days, or in a couples of weeks, and then quickly deteriorate. The despondent young mother, who also happens to be a doctor, goes straight home, picks her children up and drops them with the older, doting and maternal Froydis (Marie Louise Tank). She then takes a flight to Northern Norway in the hope to persuade her estranged husband to divorce her. They separated two years earlier, and she is terrified that he could claim the guardianship of the children after she succumbs to the disease.

Upon meeting encountering her ex-husband in the middle of tennis match, and failing to engage in a conversation with him, Emma accidentally comes into contact with his current partner going into labour, a woman called Nina. Thanks to her medical skills, she assists the poor woman. What follows is an even clunkier domestic violence plot, which then morphs into a shabby courtroom ordeal. The film is sealed up with a resolution that’s beyond awkward.

The only positive comment I can make about Night is that it has heart at the right place. Everything else is all over the place. This Norwegian movie is a masterclass of everything you shouldn’t have in film: a terrible script, irregular grain textures, awful lighting, unnecessary jump cuts, lukewarm performances, no make-up (a dying person should look remotely ill), a camera that unexpectedly jostles, and a creepy ending that will make you cringe. Even the audio engineering is noticeably bad: there is a lot of echo in the indoors sequences. A little of bit of ADR could have helped, too: voices change abruptly, a sign of poor sound capturing choices.

The Norwegian director was indeed part of the Dogme 95 movement, and has presumably attempted to incorporate some of the manifest’s “10 commandments” into her 2022 film. She seems to think that she can craft a sense of tension by simply adding a jump cut two or three times a minute. That of course won’t work if your script and your actors are substandard. That’s when the editing technique becomes entirely gratuitous. Make no mistake: this is neither Lars von Trier nor Jean-Luc Godard. This isn’t experimental cinema, either. Instead, Night looks like a student film put together in less than two weeks.

Night has just premiered in the Official Competition of the 26th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.



"Thoroughly sanitised movie"

By Victor Fraga - 23-11-2022

By Victor Fraga - 23-11-2022

Victor Fraga is a Brazilian born and London-based journalist and filmmaker with more than 20 years of involvement in the cinema industry and beyond. He is an LGBT writer, and describes himself as a di...

DMovies Poll

Are the Oscars dirty enough for DMovies?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Most Read

Forget Friday the 13th, Paranormal Activity and the [Read More...]
Just a few years back, finding a film [Read More...]
A lot of British people would rather forget [Read More...]
Another year has gone by, and DMovies is [Read More...]
A small family of four lives in a [Read More...]
Pigs might fly. And so Brexit might happen. [Read More...]

Read More

Is 65 the new Jurassic Park?

 

Marina Hillquist - 28-03-2023

Marina Hillquist argues that the American sci-fi action thriller by the creators of A Quiet Place had the potential to unseat the monopoly of the Jurassic Park franchise, but it struggled to escape some familiar trappings [Read More...]

Riotsville USA

Sierra Pettengill
2023

Eoghan Lyng - 28-03-2023

American documentary conducts a probing investigation into one of the USA's most shameful moments in history, the Vietnam War, offering few answers but many damning insights - in cinemas on Friday, March 31st [Read More...]

Reclaiming Vincente Minnelli’s overlooked gem

 

Isy Santini - 25-03-2023

Not quite what it seems: Isy Santini takes a dirty look at Vincente Minnelli's Brigadoon and argues that the film - which most thought to be a musical - was in reality a horror piece! [Read More...]

Facebook Comment

Website Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *