Extérieur, nuit

Breaking with his past, jazz musician Léo (Gérard Lanvin) moves in with his old friend Bony (André Dussollier), a struggling writer. Together they meet Cora (Christine Boisson), a loner who lives by her wits and drives a taxi by night, occasionally mugging her clients and always dreaming of escape. The two friends fall under her elusive, unpredictable spell and, as the days go by, an intense, sometimes violent relationship builds up between Cora and Léo. But one day Cora drops by to see Léo and finds Bony alone. She lets herself be seduced by him, too, as if in the end nothing really matters anyway. Such is the moody, boozy ebb and flow of writer-director Jacques Bral’s sui generis relationship drama–a kind of down-and-out Eric Rohmer film, by way of Kaurismaki–presented here in the 2010 restoration that was rereleased in French cinemas to widespread critical acclaim. NOT ON DVD.

“There is the night, the grain of the film, the city lights, the camerawork of Pierre-William Glenn, the music of Karl-Heinz Schafer, which appears so simple, natural and exciting, dizzying. There is in Extérieur, nuit the best of cinema in the years to come, Kaurismaki’s gifted younger brother.”
–Pascal Mérigeau, Le Nouvel Observateur