One Night (2012)
In the harbor city of Le Havre, France, a woman is stabbed during the night, just below the windows of her neighborhood. Pierre (Yvan Attal) has witnessed the murder, and heard the wails of the women crying for help. So have the neighbors, certainly. But at the end, nobody called the police. Nevertheless, sorrows are too heavy for Pierre, which feel the needs to tell everything to his wife (Sophie Quinton), and to the police. During the investigation, it appears that 38 people witnessed the murdering, and none reacted...
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People are voting emotionally.
The acting in this movie is really good.
Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
As the prosecutor states: a third of the population is on neuroleptics, another third are cowards. Selfishness, cowardness, guilt and shame are the fabric of this slow paced, Scandinavian style movie. It is a false thriller. The true murderer is the social breakdown.It reminded me of "12 angry men" with a twist. 38 zombies would be more appropriate. With beautiful images of Le Havre port where, in a sequence, loaders and machines dance a threatening ballet. A disheartening but relevant subject movies are not supposed to cover.Yvan Attal looks stubbornly stoned face which is the only proper attitude. He seems to know exactly his fate. The cast plays well, anger, guilt or shame, which is not an easy task.
In this story, there is no many room for actors to show all their skills. So, on the point of the performance of the actors, the film is rather dull. What is thrilling in this story, is the fact that the community of the neighborhood stays united while everybody lies about having heard the yelling of the woman savagely assassinated and nobody took the initiative of calling the police. That is, it seems that the lie cement the relationships between the members of the community. When truth comes to light, and the members of the neighborhood have to confess to the police that they heard, indeed, the yelling of the victim, each member gets aware of his own cowardice and the cowardice of each of the other members. So, the relationships between the members are severely shaken. And because of this trauma, the community takes Pierre Morvan as a scapegoat and start to abhor him. Also his wife, who during the hole story affirms to support him in any circumstance, his wife quits. The moral of the story seems to be that a lie is stronger than the truth to cement the relationship of a group of people.
" Look outside the window There's a woman being grabbedThey've dragged her to the bushesAnd now she's being stabbedMaybe we should call the copsAnd try to stop the pain But Monopoly is so much funI'd hate to blow the game"PHIL OCHS - OUTSIDE OF A SMALL CIRCLE OF FRIENDS What the folksinger depicts in his song is exactly what happens in the movie;by and large ,it is another version of "the accused" (Jonathan Kaplan ,1988)in which Oscar-winner Jodie Foster was raped before indifferent (or vicious ) eyes ,but here the witnesses claim that they've heard or seen nothing;all of them were in their apartment ,they did not intervene or even call the Police .Given this harrowing subject,it is a pity that the movie is so dull and so mediocre ;the central character,the coward who wants to redeem himself is played by a Johnny -one-note Yvan Attal;his girlfriend is the most uninteresting character of the script,being in China when "it " happened" ,so why give such an important part to her?Only talented Nicole Garcia tries to save something from the wreckage ,sadly unsupported by the rest of the cast.Yves Boisset or André Cayatte were often unfairly despised by the "true connoisseurs" of the French cinema;those men are /were able to give that kind of story substance ;they are sorely missed here.
I think the story itself is very interesting and keeps people busy in these times but how this movie highlights the theme is a pity.The acting is not so well, at some points it looks like a cheap (American style) soap series with the same 'soapy' camera shots and thin conversations. It gets worse as the movie progresses and the director is trying to get emotions in the viewer but that didn't work that well. Some dialogs are just not natural in the emotional state the people intend to be. The part on the beach with the man (lead actor) reading the newspaper article of the journalist is really lightly and the movie itself feels like a rattled off story.There's not much wrong with the lighting and cinematic quality. There are some very pretty harbor/boat/city shots in the movie, especially in the beginning but later in the movie some (repeated) shots start to irritate and the director uses the same silence/hard-noisy sound trick too much. The camera angles were pretty standard in dialogs. The movie is more photographic than cinematic.If the story is not so strong and the acting is not so well, the soundtrack can save the 'general atmosphere' of the movie. Unfortunately, that part also failed because of the very simple and obvious guitar tunes.A story like this should hit the 'emotional snare' but I think the the director failed to attract the audience in his emotional story.There are much better (French) movies available so my advice is to skip this one.