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.
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.