Beatrice Gibson has been a fascinating voice in the film community for a while. Her work has been featured at major events worldwide, including I Hope I’m Loud When I’m Dead and Someplace In Your Mouth, both of which were screened at TIFF. Those works blur the line between autofiction and docufiction, using film texture to create a blurred portrait of reality. Similarly, she creates in a more expansive form with At Night, her debut feature, which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival in the Cineasti del Presente section. Following six women through the night in Paris, the director explores the different realities of femaleness and how they connect to the city. It has a simple structure, which contributes to understanding each one’s intentions.
In the first minutes, Gibson inserts the audience into Paris. A streetcar crosses the streets of the French capital; immediately, we notice Ben Rivers’s cinematography. Another central filmmaker in the arthouse circuit, he shoots it in 16mm, providing a raw look that blends well with the city’s decaying look. It also contributes to the film’s poetics, which is evident in the dialogues and in the way the director places those women. In a particular scene, two women, a Frenchwoman and an Englishwoman, meet in a supermarket. However, when they start talking, the light goes down. They sit on the ground and start talking about one’s child and the other’s questions about maternity. Despite the darkness of the setting, the lightless grocery store, there is a sight there; we see them properly, and we can understand the visuals of it. In this sense, this moment also reflects on the others, where the director opts for low lighting, underlighting the film, and choosing the neon rays that reflect on their faces.
Each conversation is a fascinating exercise in how those individuals see themselves. The central scene of the film revolves around a dinner table, with their conversations about pregnancy, career, sex, and other topics. The filmmaker transcends herself into the story, as B, a director who introduces a few women to the others. Interestingly, the autofiction lies in her interest in people, listening to their stories, and how that might affect her work. Evidently, the feature surges as a result of those conversations and the urge to hear, talk about, and discuss similar feelings with others.
Consequently, there is a variety of stories there, including those of literary figures such as Sophie Robinson and June Jordan, as well as Alice Notley, who appears reading a passage from her poem, The Descent of Alette. The director borrows directly from poetry to create a lyrical scenario, balancing the questioning of those individuals with the scarce responses to their inquiries. One of those moments is a woman who grieves her infertility, sharing the painful process of loss with the others. It blends with the film’s literary inspiration, including the fact that the woman is a poet, and uses words to exorcise her frustration over that situation. After a while, we understand how B is lost in the process of her imagery-making; after all, why is she making a film? The conversation feels like an attempt to draw substance from the world to throw it onto the screen, and that is what she does, creating a film that blurs the line between fiction and reality.
At times, the poeticism and experimentalism of her form feel a tad excessive. Still, Gibson provides, in the dialogues of those women, the necessary fascination between the inserts of poetry and musical performance. The talks are an element of proximity between the watcher and those women who tell the history of sex work, filmmaking, writing, or loss. Independent of the stories, the manner in which it is shot makes it a noteworthy exercise in both fiction and documentary, demonstrating that it is not the category that matters but the way it operates within its frame. In a sense, the exterior sequences remind one of her short Someplace In Your Mouth, which uses the neon lights in the dark to document the experience of the youth in Palermo. It is an extension of that concept, creating a broader notion.
Even if it has sequences that feel off, At Night is an impressive debut feature by Beatrice Gibson, who utilizes her full-length project to question why she is a filmmaker. The result is an understanding of different female experiences in the city, including their intentions for their work and their plans for the future. Ultimately, it is a document of the atmosphere of the Night in the French capital, which is home to plenty of fascinating stories.
At Night recently played at the Locarno Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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