Film Review: Last Night

I like movies.  But, I rarely love them.  This week, Massy Tadjedin's Last Night became one of the precious few movies that have truly and deeply moved me.  I have had the good fortune of having seen almost a dozen movies during this year's TriBeCa Film Festival.  And true to festival form, they have run the gamut from flatly mediocre to dazzling-in-every-respect.  When it comes to Last Night, I can honestly say that I am in love.  (Watch a trailer here.)

The film is set in New York City, which is entirely fitting given both its U.S. premier venue (TFF) and its complexity.  Tedjedin said in an interview before the festival that the original setting was Los Angeles (and New Mexico), but that the film migrated naturally to New York (and Philadelphia) as it developed.  In my eyes, this story could not have carried the emotional load it did had it been set in any other city.  For a variety of reasons, the massiveness of the city and its resulting propensity for unexpected incidences being one of them, this movie is not a mere love story, but a New York love story.

Tadjedin keeps the plot simple:  an otherwise happily married husband and wife are separated for a night during which each faces sexual and emotional temptation -- a sexy co-worker for him, an ex-lover for her.  Each must decide how the evening will play out, balance their conflicting desires, and temper their ideas of what is right with their knowledge of what is true.  And, by creating sympathetic characters, Tadjedin and the cast force the audience to do the same.  But Last Night is about so much more than the crust of its plot. 



2010(c) Miramax

 It touches on everything from the co-existence of two romantic loves within one soul to the simultaneous separation and intermingling of devotion and desire, connection and loneliness, and passion and regret to the relativity of love.  It explores the aspects of love most essential to men versus women, highlighting the difference between the two alongside the undercurrent of commonality.  It comments upon the motivations that drive business people versus artists.  It questions the associations between love and fidelity, sex and emotion, the past and the future, and choice and consequence.  It digs deep, deeper than some audience members may even detect, at the reasons we choose as we do, deconstructing the linear mode of thinking that we tend to impose on love.



2010(c) Miramax

The evocative representation of these themes inevitably will interject doubt into societal assumptions and judgments about humanity and romantic love that most people (to the extent they can accept such dogmatic challenges) will carry with them out of the theatre and into the street.  And, when they really think about it, I am convinced that many will feel slightly uncomfortable with how much they identify with the characters in the movie.  I certainly saw myself in every single one of them.  In a world where we strive to make truth a black and white issue, the grayness of reality might just feel like a real punch to the gut.

Even beyond the thematic and emotional underpinnings of the film, it shines in just about every other respect as well.  The aesthetic is perfect moody NYC.  The acting (especially on the part of Kiera Knightly, whose performance is raw and real) is phenomenal.  The cinematography and musical composition are seamless.  And the writing, especially with respect to dialogue, is deep and spot-on.  I could literally discuss the nuances of certain scenes for days.  Actually, forget "could" -- I am.  And, while I know I'll eventually stop talking about it and gravitate towards new art, I am also sure that some bits of Last Night will still be with me years from now.



2010(c) Miramax