In the footsteps of Julia Ducournau
Presented at the Orrizonti in Venice a year ago, Waiting for the night then won the Special Jury Prize at the Gérardmer Fantastic Film Festival last January. For her first feature film, co-produced with Belgium by Guillaume Malandrin – who is responsible for releasing the film in Belgian cinemas –, Delphine Rouzet is part of the lineage of French female directors who have recently taken over genre cinema. We are obviously thinking of Julia Ducournau with Grave et Titanium (Palme d’Or 2021), but also to Coralie Fargeat, who packed part of the Croisette with The Substancea huge horror film starring Demi Moore who won the award for best screenplay.
Julia Ducournau, one year after “Titane”
Crouzet prefers a form of magical realism to the grotesque and gore. Like Grave reimagined the zombie myth in a realistic, family-friendly context, Waiting for the night uses the vampire theme to explore family relationships, but also the mutations and wounds of adolescence. Nothing fundamentally original, then, but the French filmmaker holds her story perfectly and develops a coherent and credible universe. And this is thanks to good actors (including Mathias Legoût Hammond in his first role on screen and the graceful Céleste Brunnquell, still on the bill for Maria and His Father’s Daughter) and an effective staging, which manages to maintain its ridge line between the tension of the thriller and the intimacy of the family drama. And this, from the very successful introductory sequence which immediately plunges us into a realistic-fantasy universe.
Waiting for the night Fantastic Of Celine Rouzet Photography Maxence Lemonnier Scenario Céline Rouzet and William Martin Musique Jean-Benoît Dunckel Montage Lea Masson With Mathias Legoût Hammond, Celeste Brunnquell, Elodie Bouchez, Jean-Charles Clichet… Duration 1h45
