When the rest of the world watches Cannes on TV or in TikTok stories, the assembled cameras usually revolve around one place: the red carpet in front of the Grand Théâtre Lumière, with over 2,000 seats. If you sit on the balcony in this cinema colossus, you have the feeling of watching the hottest world premiere of the year on a 43-inch TV from the couch.
The Lumière is famous for its red carpet – and because at every gala premiere, everyone jumps up so that the industry magazines can measure the length of the standing ovation. longest Standing O. of all Cannes times was in 2006, when people clapped for 22 minutes for Pan’s Labyrinth, according to the BBC. Have you ever clapped and cheered from the beginning to the end of a Friends episode? Don’t try this at home…
Be that as it may, the other Cannes festival is taking place in the shadow of the flashbulbs, because alongside the official selection with the Palme d’Or, the Palme d’Honore and other flora, other independent festivals are taking place on the Croisette at the same time. Their red carpet is not as long, their cinemas are smaller, but the films are sometimes just as good or better. Eat the Night is one of them.
In Eat the Night the countdown to the end of childhood begins
At the beginning of the film there is a loading bar and then we are racing through the streets in and around Le Havre in the north of France on a motorbike. In this place you wouldn’t expect to see muscular fantasy warriors with man-sized swords. Drug dealers, more likely. Both merge into one another in Eat the Night and thanks to its three main characters.
For Pablo (Théo Cholbi) and his little sister Apo (Lila Gueneau) this is MMORPG Darknoon less an escape route, but rather their home from reality. With sensitivity and respect, the script/director team Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel (Jessica Forever) sketch out what appeals to them in a few lines. Over the years, the virtual world developed into a real place for them in its own way, where memories are created and shared. A click on the login opens the door to a safe, warm home.
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But Darknoon is about to be shut down. The countdown to the end is on. At the same time, Pablo meets the supermarket clerk Night (Erwan Kepoa Falé) and introduces him to his homemade drug dealing business. The two men begin a passionate relationship. Apo, who was previously so close with her big brother, spends more and more time alone in Darknoon.
Spielberg sci-fi meets drug thriller in the Cannes highlight
The dealer activities, however, are attracting the displeasure of the competition, which Unwelcome competitors have been eliminated with a headshotEat the Night is anything but a typical coming-of-age film. A teaspoon of Ready Player One, a pinch of Euphoria and a few milligrams of The Wire and you’re already getting closer to the idiosyncratic film that is celebrating its world premiere at the Quinzaine des cinéastes.
What’s really refreshing about Eat the Night is how seriously each genre in the mishmash is taken. The animations of the Darknoon world may not quite match a Spielberg budget, but they’re convincing enough to make you think teenagers would willingly invest thousands of hours in them.
Poggi and Vinel stage the coming-of-age story with an eye-level power of observation that transforms all three heroes into flesh and blood in an instant. And the drug thriller plunges into a Spiral of violence, whose brutal twists and turns one must first processEat the Night is not a perfect film. Despite all the stars and great directors, small films like this are a good reason to travel to Cannes in May and rush from one line to the next from 8 a.m. to midnight.
Eat the Night has not yet been released in German cinemas.