![]() The pulsating beats of house, trap, and synth-driven electro soundtrack the movie. The camera swirls around its subjects as though they're posing or acting. It's a look that feels cinematic like a feature film. The color is drained, creating a crisp yet somber winter backdrop for the story. There's no lower third that states the subjects' names, ages, or locations. All These Sleepless Nights has none of the markers of a typical documentary. To some degree, their confusion is warranted. Some critics questioned the film's authenticity and speculated that its reality wasn't so real at all, in the same vein of popular reality series like The Hills or Made in Chelsea, in which producers drop their subjects into pre-staged parties and events to generate drama. He was also nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. But amid the occasionally surreal, dreamlike images and the cyclic, stoner rants, there is a atmospheric account of a young man’s quest for self-expression – the need to say something, even if he isn’t yet sure what it will be.Buzz swirled around the film after Marczak won the World Cinema Documentary Directing Award at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. This is not the kind of film which takes its characters on a neat arc of development. His conversations are at cross purposes and his search for meaning amid all the cigarettes and glitter face paint is thwarted. Wide-eyed and striking, with looks that veer between chiselled beauty and gangly awkwardness, Kris seems increasingly lost. Michal, who clearly still holds a candle for Eva, withdraws from Kris’ life, leaving him to negotiate alone the ‘ant hill of vanity’, as one character memorably describes the city’s club culture. The friendship between Kris and Michal is put under strain when Kris falls for Michal’s ex-girlfriend, the charismatic and idiosyncratic Eva (Eva Lebeuf). This is a generation that is not concerned with Warsaw’s past history and lives entirely, intensely in the present. Marczak’s camera weaves woozily through the throngs of dancers, our view of the scene is appropriately tipsy. The film meanders through seemingly endless nights against a backdrop of pulsing techno and snippets of hazy conversation. He makes a loose pact with his friend Michal (Michal Huszcza) to live life to the fullest, embracing every experience that it throws at them. ![]() Kris (Krzysztof Baginski) has just split up with his long-term girlfriend, contributing to the 17 hours in total that he estimates he will spend on break ups during his entire life. One wonders just how many recollections the central characters of this odyssey through house parties, raves, clubs and strung out mornings after are actually going to accrue, given the vast quantities of drugs they get through. The film opens with a definition of the term ‘Reminiscence bump’ – a psychological concept which refers to the tendency for older adults to have increased recollection of events that occurred during their adolescence and early adulthood. ![]() A shared spirit with French New Wave and the film’s formal daring will recommend it to cineaste festival attendees, however broader theatrical prospects might be somewhat hampered by the fact the ideal audience for this material – young people of the same age group as the main characters – are not the most likely punters to venture this far into experimental arthouse waters. Though perhaps low on insights, this is an evocative portrait of a brief, intense window of hedonism, self discovery and Olympic levels of self-indulgence experienced by young people on the cusp of adulthood. The director of Fuck For Forest creates an evocative portrait of a brief, intense window of hedonism for young friends in Warsaw In technique, if not the milieu, the film has some similarities to the approach employed by Roberto Minervini fo r Stop The Pounding Heart and The Other Side. Staged sequences and reality are so meshed together that it’s impossible to unpick which is which. Director Michal Marczak ( Fuck For Forest) cast the real-life characters, who play themselves, and then worked with them to develop a narrative for the film. ![]() Inhabiting the blurred hinterland between documentary and fiction, this hypnotically aimless journey through a year and a bit in the lives of a pair of young friends in Warsaw defies neat categorisation.
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