Metrograph

Emotions boil over and thunder rolls during one oppressively humid summer night in Brussels in Akerman’s tender and melancholy film of brief encounters, furtive embraces, nocturnal despair, yearning vigils, and pregnant silences. A string of self-contained vignettes, precisely composed and parsimonious in use of dialogue, their abiding air of tension occasionally rent by cloudbursts of frenzied feeling, Toute une nuit may be regarded, like the filmmaker’s News from Home, as an inimitable twist on the “city symphony” genre, laying its scenes in the bars, cafes, and streets of Akerman’s hometown. “A comédie sentimentale treated as a choreographed dance.” —Cahiers du Cinéma

Distributor: Janus Films