You and the Night

You and the Night is a film about living, throbbing sexuality, beginning with a brush of death.Ā 

byĀ Patrick Cash


We find the beautiful Matthias with his life ebbing away, his impassioned female lover roaring him on a motorbike through the dark night, until they meet their effeminate male maid. ‘Quick,’ says the female lover, ā€˜wank him off and get him hard!ā€™ The effeminate maid shoves a hand through Matthiasā€™ flies, begins enthusiastically wanking away, and sure enough, Matthias is returned from the brink.

I have to admit I was initially watching this in clutched-pearls artistic shock, spitting out my chicken nuggets and being like ā€˜is this film for real?ā€™ to the cat. But black humour propels much of this fascinating film along, a lot like a whirring hand around a hard cock. When I spoke to director Yann Gonzalez, hailing from the South of France and a former film critic, he confirmed that ā€˜itā€™s very important to get viewers on your side from early on with laughter. I make films that I want to see. A lot of people said ā€˜is this humour unintentional?ā€™ and of course itā€™s not! Itā€™s very deliberate.ā€™

The main plot centres around a sex orgy being organised in an anonymous Parisian apartment. Characters rock up as representatives of sexualityā€™s different facets ā€“ the Stud, the Slut, the Star, the Teen ā€“ rather than fully formed emotional entities. Yet this works with the overall concept, given that Yann says the film is ā€˜80% fantasy, 20% own experienceā€™. It has an almost Sartrean feel to the action, as the characters lurk, lust and prowl around one another trapped within four walls; albeit weā€™ve never seen Eric Cantona get splattered in the face with flying vaginal fluids in ā€˜No Exitā€™.

Yann wrote the film after reading the diaries of scandalous 1920s French socialite Mireille Havet. A friend of gay playwright Jean Cocteau, openly lesbian herself, and a notorious drug addict, she died at the age of 33 after living her remaining years jacking hotels without paying the bill. In one of these hotel rooms she left her unfinished novel; the tragic romanticism of her life, combined with the open sexual lyricism of her writing, would be an inspiration upon Yannā€™s script.

ā€˜Thereā€™s lots of literature in the film,ā€™ he says, and indeed the charactersā€™ various vocalised fantasies and histories, lend much to this impression. When not furiously wanking each other off, or begging to see Cantonaā€™s (ā€˜The Studā€™) gigantic genitalia ā€“ which is definitely shown at one point, boys, be it prosthetic or not ā€“, they tell stories of how their relation to sexuality began, which are played out on the screen. One is caught in a cage with a whip where the polarities of masculine and female power subvert by turns; another crawls through a corridor of beautiful naked bodies; The Teen tells of how he uses his youth and his experimentation to aid him in living on the streets, by using both men and women.

Within these walls, sexuality dissolves its rigid constructs of ā€˜gayā€™ and ā€˜straightā€™ and becomes a fluid slipping between skins with as much ease as the characters exchange bodily juices. Itā€™s an intriguing experiment to watch, and ultimately produces an odd but, dare I say it, quite heartwarming solidarity between the group. When two straight, aggressive males visit the flat looking for The Teen, bringing with them their outside social constraints, they begin to homophobically abuse the effeminate maid. One of the women comes to his aid, to protect him from their divisive dynamics.

Ultimately, Yann says, he wants this film to be an artwork of hope. It begins with death for a reason, and heā€™s not afraid to visit that ā€˜tabooā€™ in many of the main plotlines; yet since Shakespeareā€™s time sex and death have been intertwined, when to orgasm was referred to as ā€˜to dieā€™. But I donā€™t think itā€™s giving too much away to say that the final image is one of great positivity, of a sun rising. And you may finish this extraordinary film remembering your own forgotten fantasies, a reminder that you are still very much alive and sexual.

 

ā€¢Ā You and the Night is out on 3rd October at the ICA Cinema, The Mall, SW1Y 5AHĀ 

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