For Night Will Come movie storyline. In the quiet little town where they move, the Ferals do everything to appear ordinary. Their son Philémon, an introverted 17-year-old teenager, has a strange condition that must be hidden at all costs. But he is growing. His desire for Camilla soon becomes confused with the thirst for blood that he had previously controlled. Its difference becomes impossible to hide… Oscillating between humor, fantasy and drama, this original “coming of age” by Céline Rouzet signals the arrival of a promising new voice in French cinema and genre cinema.
For Night Will Come is a Franco-Belgian fantasy drama film directed by Céline Rouzet and starring Mathias Legout Hammond, Élodie Bouchez, Jean-Charles Clichet, Céleste Brunnquell, Laly Mercier, Louis Peres, Angèle Metzger, Bakary Diombera, Anne Benoît and Valérie Lemaitre. The screenplay was written by Céline Rouzet and William Martin. This is the director’s first feature-length fiction film. The film won the special jury prize at the 31st Gérardmer International Fantastic Film Festival.
Film Review for For Night Will Come
Did you like Twilight and the recent Humanist Vampire Seeks Consenting Suicide? You might like Waiting for the Night. Winner of the Jury Prize at the last Gérardmer Fantastic Film Festival, En attendant la nuit is the first feature-length fiction film by director Céline Rouzet, to whom we owe the documentary 140 km to the west of paradise.
Led by Mathias Legoût Hammond, whose first role in the cinema, Céleste Brunnquell (Les Éblouis, La Fille de son père), Élodie Bouchez, Jean-Charles Clichet, and the young Laly Mercier, the feature film follows Philémon, a teenager like no other: to survive, he needs human blood. In the slightly too quiet suburban suburb where he moves with his family, he does everything to blend into the surroundings. Until the day he falls in love with his neighbor Camila and draws attention to them…
If the story inevitably recalls Twilight, the film is far removed from the saga with Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. Behind this love story, the filmmaker wanted to highlight the way in which conformism has taken over our society and how the marginalized are treated
Céline Rouzet explains in the press kit: “Waiting for the Night is the story of a boy who scares the people he loves and who is looking for his place in a world that does not resemble him. The film is about marginality and conformism, family sacrifices, animal desire… and the savagery that lies beneath the surface of ordinary life. With this film, I wanted to tell what has always obsessed me: a conventional world that is. fissure, disturbing characters, the discomfort that results from it.”
But this subject is also very personal. The filmmaker, initially a journalist, lost her brother in 2014 and wanted to tell his story in a feature film. She explains: “I had to tell my brother’s story but I didn’t know how to go about it. It seemed impossible to do it in a too realistic and direct way.
One day, when I was attempting the La Fémis script workshop, the idea of vampirism appeared to me as obvious. I remembered that this figure had haunted my brother a lot when he was little, he who was born different and who suffered a lot from the rejection of others. As a child, he saw vampires come to his room to talk to him. He was terrified of them, but as his life progressed, he began to harbor a sort of fascination with them. He watched every vampire movie he could find and I began to believe that he felt a connection with these misunderstood creatures, these fragile, frightening monsters whose condition is invisible at first glance.”
The filmmaker and screenwriter adds: “Vampirism operates as a metaphor for disability, depression and adolescent unhappiness. For me, fiction and the use of genre cinema make it possible to exacerbate situations by distancing a reality too harsh. The film nevertheless draws a bitter observation on the violence of the norm and the fear of the other…”
You will have understood, Waiting for the Night is a romance coupled with an intimate family drama. Beyond the love story and Philemon’s need to drink blood and hide from the sun, the film talks about difference and the difficulty for beings deemed different to integrate into society. Philémon’s difference impacts his entire family and has consequences on the lives of his younger sister and his parents who will try everything to protect him.
The main writing difficulty for Céline Rouzet and her co-writer William Martin was to make Philemon an innocent monster, a being that even the spectators want to protect. And the opening scene of the feature film achieves this brilliantly.
Céline Rouzet declares: “I especially sought to arouse emotion, tension and unease, sometimes even laughter – rather than disgust or fear. When you think about it, neither Only lovers left alive, nor even At the Borders of Dawn are not real horror films. I believe that the vampire is first associated with themes of dissidence and marginality. With my producers Candice Zaccagnino and Olivier Aknin, we envisioned the film as one. “coming of age” which is heading towards the wall. I would therefore say that it is the story of an adolescent who harbors the hope of living among men. Philémon has the symptoms of a vampire and dreams of becoming one. man but society pushes him to become a vampire Our biggest writing challenge was making him an innocent monster.
Played by Mathias Legoût Hammond, young Philemon is a teenager who dreams of being “normal”, but does normality exist? Judged and harassed by others, the latter will find comfort in Camila’s arms.
The director explains: “Mathias stood out to me as an obvious choice even though he had never done anything before and more experienced actors had been cast. I was looking for someone youthful, with strange beauty, far from the old canons of virility. As the vampire has always been an erotic figure, I was looking for a pale, sensual and frightening beauty. When Mathias appeared, he was trembling but he said the lines exactly as we do them. We had written and imagined. He had in him the song of the sentences and this mixture of sweetness and contained anger that I was looking for in Philémon.
She adds: “To construct this human-vampire figure, we adorned him with David Bowie-style teeth. With makeup artist Flore Chandès, we worked on his different states: sometimes more ringed and feverish, the protruding veins at his forehead, sometimes a more transparent pallor and his hair slicked back as he gains in confidence and power…”
For Night Will Come (2024)
En Attendant la Nuit
Directed by: Céline Rouzet
Starring: Mathias Legout Hammond, Élodie Bouchez, Jean-Charles Clichet, Céleste Brunnquell, Laly Mercier, Louis Peres, Angèle Metzger, Bakary Diombera, Anne Benoît, Valérie Lemaitre
Screenplay by: Céline Rouzet, William Martin
Production Design by: Chloé Cambournac
Cinematography by: Maxence Lemonnier
Film Editing by: Léa Masson
Costume Design by: Clement Vachelard
Art Direction by: Vincent Capelli
Music by: Jean-Benoît Dunckel
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Tandem (France)
Release Date: March 25, 2024 (United States), June 5, 2024 (France)
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