“A hot summer evening in Brussels: couples dance in bars and cafés, part outside homes, or escape together under the darkness of night; some discover or reignite romance, some end it, while still more grasp tightly to each other in the last moments of dying love. In Chantal Akerman’s inimitable Toute une nuit, the modern city and its inhabitants are captured in fragmentary, elliptical visions of desire, frustration, and loneliness, with more than two dozen characters appearing in fleeting vignettes that tease the possibility of larger narratives. Applying a formalist framework to tableaulike sequences drenched in moody atmosphere, Akerman fashions a new cinematic grammar that combines structuralist rigor with the dreamy solitude of Edward Hopper: in her hands, human intimacy and alienation are dramatically heightened by paring down dialogue and foregrounding delicate and sudden gestures, sounds, and glances. Alongside magnus opus Jeanne Dielman, Toute une nuit is one of the legendary Belgium director’s greatest triumphs: a charming, avant-garde melodrama that is as much about the weight of time as the longing for connection.” -Janus Films
Restored in 2K with the support of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation and the Brussels-Capital Region from the 35mm CRI negative. The color grading was done by the film’s director of photography, Caroline Champetier AFC, and Frédéric Savoir (Amazing Digital Studios).
