NOBODY wants The Night, or Binoche Queen of the North. Original Spanish title "Nadie Quiere la Noche"
The 65th Berlin Film Festival opened with two portraits of obsessed women in life threatening wasteland situations, Portrayed by international superstars, respectively Juliet Binoche in "Nobody Wants the Night" and Nicole Kidman in Werner Herzog's "Queen of the Desert".
In the first Binoche portrays the wife of Commander Peary who was lost in the far north seeking to be the first man to reach the North Pole. His wife (an austere aging Binoche) sets out to find him defying all sorts of insanely threatening situations while her Eskimo team strongly advises against carrying on in the barren Arctic white desert where only polar bears are at home --what happens to her at the end of this harrowing trip through the Arctic wasteland I only found out later because, like many others in the audience, I felt compelled to leave long before her tedious ordeal was over. The walkouts from this opening night packed house crowd at the Friedrichstadt Palast started at around the thirty minute mark and soon became a steady flow. (Ps: After getting herself isolated somewhere in Greenland she was eventually saved by an Inuit-Eskimo woman played by a Japanese actress, and, oh yes, veteran Arctic guide Gabriel Byrne perished early on when the ice gave out under his feet... ) That was the festival opening film directed by Catalan femme director Isabel Coixet (pronounced Kwashet) a Berlin favorite and regular. NOT the best possible opening choice from an audience perspective, but fest director Dieter Kosslick has his own private priorities.
Bottom line: Binoche looks great but doesn't cut the ice in this one. Give it three stars for the dogs and the scenery.
The 65th Berlin Film Festival opened with two portraits of obsessed women in life threatening wasteland situations, Portrayed by international superstars, respectively Juliet Binoche in "Nobody Wants the Night" and Nicole Kidman in Werner Herzog's "Queen of the Desert".
In the first Binoche portrays the wife of Commander Peary who was lost in the far north seeking to be the first man to reach the North Pole. His wife (an austere aging Binoche) sets out to find him defying all sorts of insanely threatening situations while her Eskimo team strongly advises against carrying on in the barren Arctic white desert where only polar bears are at home --what happens to her at the end of this harrowing trip through the Arctic wasteland I only found out later because, like many others in the audience, I felt compelled to leave long before her tedious ordeal was over. The walkouts from this opening night packed house crowd at the Friedrichstadt Palast started at around the thirty minute mark and soon became a steady flow. (Ps: After getting herself isolated somewhere in Greenland she was eventually saved by an Inuit-Eskimo woman played by a Japanese actress, and, oh yes, veteran Arctic guide Gabriel Byrne perished early on when the ice gave out under his feet... ) That was the festival opening film directed by Catalan femme director Isabel Coixet (pronounced Kwashet) a Berlin favorite and regular. NOT the best possible opening choice from an audience perspective, but fest director Dieter Kosslick has his own private priorities.
Bottom line: Binoche looks great but doesn't cut the ice in this one. Give it three stars for the dogs and the scenery.