Tag: Mikhaël Hers

Passengers of The Night (Les passagers de la nuit)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

There’s a certain serenity and magic that comes over me while listening to the radio late at night. It can often feel like you’re the only one listening to the radio host while the rest of the world has gone to sleep. Named after a late-night show that accompanies truckers on long-distance journeys, Passengers of the Night has a similar kind of soft energy. Director Mikhaël Hers transmits this personal-feeling story to us as if he’s talking alone in a radio booth, creating an ode to both the bonds of family and reminiscences of the era in the process.

Like a lot of French films, it takes a broad, novelistic approach, taking us on a journey through the 80s, a golden age for the left, opening on François Mitterrand’s election on 10th May 1981 and ending with his decline. Hers shoots on film, mixing hazy, muted images with archive footage, creating a nostalgic feel for the time, further accompanied by classic 80s bands like Television and Lloyd Cole & the Commotions. Paris, photographed from all sides, looks particularly dreamy here, with Eric Rohmer films playing in Marquee cinemas, people playing tennis against buildings, and punk parties by the Seine.

Charlotte Gainsbourg stars as Élisabeth, a recently divorced mother looking after her two teenage children, Matthias (Quito Rayon-Richter) and Judith (Megan Northam). Matthias is a classic randy teenager, staring at girls in the apartment block opposite them and dreaming of the first time he will have sex. Judith is the political one, grateful for Mitterand’s election and holding plans to run for office one day. As far as families go, they get on pretty well, Hers electing to explore personal development rather than engineering generic conflicts.

But Élisabeth has to make ends meet for his children and applies on a whim to a late night radio talk show, where people call in and tell their stories. Quite the opposite of modern radio talk shows, which thrive on debate or conflict, Passengers of The Night is a more relaxed and hush programme, simple allowing people to tell us about their lives. Rather frustratingly, we don’t ever see any of these shows in detail, apart from one guest, the enigmatic 18-year-old Talulah (Noée Abita), who lives on the streets.

Élisabeth invites Talulah into their home, but her secrets never unveil. Like the drifter in Agnes Varda’s Vagabond (1985),she is a woman without a past. Usually this would irk me, but it fits in with the central theme of the movie that some secrets, whether written, spoken or implied, are better left in the past, better existing in the memories of just one person. The final result is a rather lovely film, one that never moved me that much, but still evokes a particular time, place and feeling with bittersweet ease.

Passengers of The Night played in the Competition section of the 72nd Berlinale, when this piece was originally written. It is out in the UK in October as part of the BFI London Film Festival.

Amanda

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

When Isis surpassed Al-Qaeda as the leading jihadist group in 2014, the following three years would see a wave of terrorism sweep across the Continent, killing dozens in France, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Spain and the UK. Of these countries, France was hit hardest, with over 200 people dying between 2015 and 2017. This spectre of tragedy looms over Amanda, Mikhaël Hers’s quiet, unassuming drama.

The title refers to 7-year-old Amanda (Isaure Multrier), who lives with her mother Sandrine (Ophélia Kolb), an English teacher at the local école. Amanda and her mother have an authentic chemistry that’s established in flowing, naturalistic sequences in their light and airy Parisian apartment. Particularly endearing is a scene in which Sandrine explains to her curious daughter the meaning of ‘Elvis has left the building’, which, I must add, educated me as well as young Amanda.

All of this is tinged with dread, for Sandrine, we know, will be killed in a terrorist attack. When this moment comes there is no punch to the gut, but there is no cheap sentimentalism, either. The real pain comes after the event when David (Vincent Lacoste), Sandrine’s twenty-something brother, has to explain to Amanda what happened to her poor mum.

It is David who carries the bulk of the emotional weight in this tragedy. His occupation is that of factotum; when he’s not greeting tourists at Gare du Nord for a vaguely dubious landlord, he’s pruning trees and shrubs at local parks. He’s a good guy though; he may lack ambition and direction but he has a shaggy-haired affability that suggests he’ll get his sh*t together at some point.

David’s prospects are spiced up when he meets Lena (Stacy Martin), a Gallic beauty who moves into one of his employer’s properties. You feel the butterflies in their stomach as they hit it off, such is the understated power of Hers’s direction and the actors’ performances. Lena, however, is also caught up in the attack, suffering wounds to her arm and, most perniciously, her mind.

This is what Amanda is about – the fallout of tragedy. A moment’s violence can cause a lifetime of suffering, but it can also heal old wounds, too. For David and Amanda, Sandrine’s tragic death becomes an olive branch to Alison (Greta Scaachi), David’s estranged mother who moved to London long before her granddaughter was born. It is unclear whether amends will be made in the long run, but the situation rings true for those who have experienced such familial shock.

Ultimately, despite its context, Amanda proves to be a warm, subtle film with an effortless naturalism, yet it lacks a visceral quality that could have made it a more absorbing, affecting piece of work.

Amanda is in cinemas Friday, January 3rd.