Natalie D.C.
A colorful depiction of love, crime, and video games, French filmmaking duo Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel’s Eat the Night follows young drug dealer Pablo (Théo Cholbi) whose close relationship with his teenage sister Appoline (Lila Gueneau) is disrupted by his blossoming romance with mysterious Night (Erwan Kepoa Falé) and the couple’s clash with a rival gang in their local Le Havre.
Premiering at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival in the Director’s Fortnight Program and slated to be released in select U.S. theaters starting January 10, Eat the Night is a crime drama thriller that sees siblings Pablo and Appoline bond over their favorite video game, Darknoon, and deal with its looming shutdown in their own distinct ways. The film is periodically interspersed with shots from the surreal world that Appoline escapes into and Pablo neglects. In addition, the film is broken up by a literal countdown towards the game’s—and the siblings’—inevitable demise.
Color pops in this sophomore feature. From Pablo’s bright green motorbike to the multicolored drugs he makes and sells with Night to the vivid atmosphere of Darknoon, this film’s cinematography—achieved by the directors’ longtime collaborator Raphaël Vandenbussche (whose previous work most notably includes Lola Quivoron’s crime drama Rodeo)—is simply gorgeous. The pinpricks of color in almost every frame of Eat the Night can be seen as artistic signifiers of Darknoon’s virtual world bleeding into reality, a smart use of bold visuals reminiscent of Jane Schoenbrun’s A24 icon I Saw the TV Glow.
Not only is this film aesthetically stunning, it also features a genre-bending story that combines themes of sibling and queer love, escapism via video games, as well as the youth’s role in drug-related crime. While the average project might struggle to balance these various and unique messages, Eat the Night does a decent job of telling a multifaceted story of a video game obsessed young man grappling with his burgeoning sexuality and the violent real world that surrounds him.
Passages’ Théo Cholbi and Erwan Kepoa Falé play their roles well, with Cholbi cleverly portraying a goofy older brother turned drug dealer and Falé doing an even better job as Pablo’s partner, a charming romantic thrust into a dangerous landscape. Pablo and Night’s relationship is only one half of Eat the Night’s heart, however, with young breakout Lila Gueneau skillfully playing the role of Appoline, a lonely teenage girl desperately fighting—in Darknoon as well as the real world—for her older brother’s attention.
Despite this film being technically sound, its story does not come without its fair share of faults. Eat the Night’s colorful motifs and jam-packed themes cannot prevent its middle from meandering into obscurity. Even though the second act is arguably filled with the most action (spoiler alert: Pablo gets arrested, Appoline runs away from home, and Night makes a dire misstep in the antagonists’ den), it’s unfortunately the most forgettable part of the film amidst more intimate scenes between the trio of protagonists or more visually compelling—albeit, at times, extremely strange-looking—animated scenes from the world of Darknoon. The last scene of the film—where Pablo and Appoline reunite within the apocalyptic last seconds of Darknoon’s existence—actually does a good job of balancing intimacy with flashiness, a feat that could’ve been more prevalent throughout the film in favor of more mundane scenes featuring plotting gang members and underdeveloped father-daughter relations.
Most of Eat the Night’s weaknesses come down to what remains memorable after all is said and done: scenes such as when Pablo teaches Night how to make his candy-like drugs and when Appoline shows Night, under his online pseudonym of “Narou,” the arresting world of Darknoon stand out in the viewer’s mind long after the film has ended. Unfortunately, neither of these moments are as narratively important as the high-action scenes that pepper the second and third acts of the film. This not only causes viewers’ questions—where is Pablo and Appoline’s father for the majority of the film? How did Pablo become a drug dealer? Why does Darknoon look like that? (that might just be a me question)—to go unanswered, but also causes the viewer to see the film’s substance as nothing more than lost within its style.
With this said, Eat the Night still acts as a competent exploration of queerness and brother-sister relations against two disparate backdrops: the criminal and the online. Fans of French indie romance-thrillers and cinematic takes on the video game genre certainly won’t want to miss this one.
