User Reviews

Reading about Chantal Akerman's formidable reputation had always led me to assume that she would be hard work, but I have seen two of her films now in the last month, and nothing could be further than the truth. The other was her adaptation of Proust's 'La Captive', and 'Nuit et jour' proves how much that was an Akerman film: there is the same glossy, dreamlike imagery and atmosphere; the not-quite-real performances; the semi-comic, semi-agonising mysteries of relationships; the importance of location and decor.

Like 'La Captive', 'Nuit' explores what it is to be free in a relationship. The film opens with almost an documentary-like introduction of the central couple who talk about their feelings of happiness and their preferred seclusion from the outside world. Jack is a taxi-driver who works by night; his day partner is Joseph with whom his girlfriend Julie begins an affair when Jack is working. Julie refuses to tell Jack of the affair, but inexplicable cracks appear in their relationship, while Joseph begins to decline emotionally.

Akerman's reputation is as a rigorous formalist, and this is a film full of doubles, repetitions, echoes, patterns. The central, titular conceit is one of division - Jack and Joseph work alternately night and day; Jack and Joseph make love with Julie night and day; Jack and Julie divide their life between day love and night work. Jack is the whole unit in this equation, her lovers being divided. This sense of fragmentation is increased by the opening introduction, where Jack and Julie seemed to be one person, with the same opinions and feelings, even words, finishing each others' sentences.

This division between people and time is also figured in place - between the interior home and the Paris streets and various anonymous hotels in which Julie conducts her two relationships; also within the home itself, its distinct rooms, its horseshoe shape that has one room looking out over another, connected by a beam, creating a mirror effect - Julie looks out and sees Jack like her reflection; later it becomes a metaphor for their relationship's fragmentation. They try to destroy the walls that seem to be a symbol of some kind of imprisoning malaise or barrier destroying their relations, but this only alienates them for good.

All this would be intriguing enough, but the division of these relations into night and day allows for a suspension of time that makes the narrative feel like a dream, with its characters walking arbitrarily in the dark, in unnaturally empty, air-brushed streets. In one extraordinary musical sequence (alluding to another great lovers in a dream-Paris film, 'An American in Paris'), Julie sings a song, each line connected in time, but split in location. The fact that all the protagonists share initials, and the two men are androgynous to say the least, suggests that 'Nuit' is the dream of one character, a dream of fragmentation and ellipse, a reversal of the 'real', ordered, conventional, daylight world of work, etc.

In any case, this is one of the great Paris films, a visual relation to Breton's novel 'Nadja', as the familiar streets become a subterranean labyrinth of the mind, echoed in the haunting reflection of a still river glowing against a marble wall. My favourite scene has Akerman pulling slowly, miraculously back through the traffic from the Place de la Republique while Joseph regales Julie with a list of his personality traits. But 'Nuit' is also a riposte to 'Jules et Jim' (those Js again), the superlative menage-a-trois film. Here, the woman achieves freedom, but is allowed to live and experience it.

Perhaps "Night and Day" is an appealing filmic essay on romantic love--the gorgeous island prior to a realtor incursion. But it could also be more about male objectification of women--that is, possessiveness as one expression of male dominance.

Whatever, the love displayed here is dreamlike, timeless, fortuitous--and exclusive. It is also naked, and thus vulnerable to any contact with the social world. In other words, it's convincing as fantasy but impossible in reality. A reality that's both outside and inside Julia, Jack, and Joseph. But if the dream itself is compelling, it is Julia's doing. She is its creator and its mainstay.

But Julia cannot act alone. Jack must pull equal weight if this love is to convince. When he begins to falter, to show signs of assessing some of its features, Julia is either lucky in finding a more soulful, poetic version of Jack or, more likely, she creates him (Jack and Joseph are sometimes almost indistinguishable).

In any case, Joseph, as the second lover, is less possessive than Jack and is willing to share Julia. Joseph's love meanwhile must be kept secret from Jack. This works out until Jack demands more attention and ownership of Julia, which in turn makes Joseph demand a similar form of exclusive love.

The question here is not one of monogamy, but of objectification. Love's necessity is two subjects, not a subject and an object. This show of male power--both inside Jack and Joseph and in the real world--can only negate Julia and her love. With one wave of a wand they can pervert what's so valuable to each of the three actors--the love they share.

If the two men are indeed separate, they become one in this critical need for an object. In this, they reveal themselves to be at one with the world. They are what the world is. And what the world is is what Julia now learns. So, if there is to be more love in her life she must walk from this one and begin the next in some new place which must start squarely in the world--if at all. (The end to shutting the door on neighbors and projecting perfect men.) Thus her determined walk at the end, which parts the boulevard traffic.

This said, perhaps "Night and Day" is simply a striking coming-of-age film. Make of it what you will, it's a visual and thought inducing feast.