Mikhaël Hers

[diamonds]

Color me disappointed with The Passengers of the Night as well. Something about this film seemed very off given the talent involved. I didn't have a problem with the lighting; it has a rather pretty, soft CRT glow to it that I'm guessing is an intentional nostalgic tint, and it's fun to compare the focus on synthetic light with Hers' & Buchmann's studies of natural light in his other beautifully shot films. (I am also, admittedly, just a sucker for shots of city lights twinkling in the background, which Passengers delivers on at regular intervals). But the cutting rhythms in the dialog scenes often feel really choppy, just jumping around to each speaker on every line/reaction. I kept wondering where the Hers who staged those wonderful group scenes in Primrose Hill had gone. Without knowing precisely when this was shot, I thought maybe his methods might've been unduly impacted by COVID protocols? Just grasping at straws for how a talented filmmaker could suddenly get sloppy with fundamentals.

The material has a lot of similarities with 20th Century Women, a kind of patchwork narrative with Charlotte Gainsborough's matriarch navigating her life post-divorce and presiding over her children (both biological and "adopted") over the course of the decade. You get a sense of her apartment as this home base everyone's orbiting around, coming together sometimes to quarrel but mostly to love. But Mills' film is populated with more fascinating, diverse, and three-dimensional characters, and is ultimately far more reflective and even ambivalent about its time period than the vague sketch in Passengers. The usual Hers hallmarks are here—scenes of sexual intimacy and a disappearance—but one can't help but feel him succumbing to a particularly enfeebling nostalgia that renders his usual sensitivity merely saccharine. It's a sweet and likable film, too much so for its own good.

Spoiler

The most interesting formal element in the film is the footage of the city drawn from a variety of video and filmic sources he drops in as transitional (or, in one striking instance, POV) shots. It's a bit like an elaboration of the strategy he uses at the very end of This Summer Feeling. As the film nears the end and the present-tense of the narrative starts bleeding into the past-tense of the footage, Hers achieves an undeniable poignancy. One just wishes that it capped off a stronger film.

Also, there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo from the actress who played Amanda that'll make your heart skip a beat.