a stormy night - gay film festival

Ambitious 

By: IMDB-jromanbaker 

29/05/2020 

No there is no sex in the film, and it is in black and white and it is more or less confined to various rooms. A Spaniard has to stay over because of a storm in a stranger's house and spends the night there with one of the two lovers who live in it. They talk a lot and sometimes the camera moves and sometimes there is just stillness of camera movement. I have seen a lot of films like this and notably Rohmer's ' Ma Nuit Chez Maud ' comes to mind. It is not as good ( for me ) as the Rohmer but it is an ambitious film. Why ? It questions monogamy, and the two characters resist their attraction towards each other. I know for a lot of homosexuals the lack of sex is frustrating, the black and white pointless but there is such a thing as austerity in film. Dreyer, Bresson, Ozu and to a lesser extent Bergman showed that it works and holds an audience and this film clearly wanted to hold an audience's attention. I think it could have worked better with actors who were clearer in their speech. I missed out a fair bit of the dialogue and had to rewind. This was annoying but I found the film a refreshing change from a lot of Gay film which has a shower scene to indicate that we will see nudity etc, etc, etc. I hope Gay people will stop accepting formula. This film is finely directed and certainly deserves better and more intelligent reviews. I personally feel it did not quite succeed, but for those who lack concentration it will not succeed at all. It demands attention to solid dialogue and intimacy without sex. Agnes Varda was mentioned in the dialogue. I do not think she would have had difficulty with it, but then she would probably have needed subtitles and for parts of the film so did I. See it if you can.

 

 

VIDEO - A STORMY NIGHT - Gay film festival - 2020 - 6/10 - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10264878/