At the Berlin Film Festival screening, an interviewer asked director Michael Ace , a depoliticized film revolving around family life, why it opens with Mitte in 1981 Lang successfully ran for French president?
Ace replied: "Although I was only six years old that year, I still remember the atmosphere at that time. For the French who have experienced that moment, it is a collective memory that we cannot avoid." (2022)
In May 1981, Mitterrand, the first leftist leader of the French Fifth Republic, took office, and countless middle- and lower-class civilians fantasized about a new era of utopia in a carnival atmosphere. But then followed by failed reforms, economic recession, serious unemployment among youths, and the leftists lost the parliamentary elections in the turbulent times. Mitterrand had to accept the strategy of "co-governance" to maintain his first one term and seek re-election.
French political and economic events from 1981 to 1988, can be compressed into a few lines of text. But in the turbulent flow of history, there are not only the turbulent waves set off by big figures and events, but also the life experience of ordinary people in a trickle. The moving part of "Night Traveler in Paris" is that it opens up the private memories of ordinary people that are folded outside the collective memory, hidden but not insignificant. Although
has been described as a "love letter to Paris" without any novelty, "Paris Night Traveler" is different from " Midnight in Paris " or "Love at Sunset in Paris" from the perspective of an American director. In Paris, the glitz of a tourist destination has faded away. Even if the Eiffel Tower occasionally appears in the background of the blurred focus, the focus of the picture is the Paris New Town without much "landscape", which is an ordinary life without a legend in a middle-class block. .
Most of the time, the high-rise La Défense appears in the camera. This new business district was once considered to be the epitome of France's post-war economic prosperity, but the landscape here lacks the well-known Parisian features, as if Low-end version of Manhattan. Rohmer and photographed "Young Men and Women in the New City of Paris" with great interest in some of his works in the 1980s. Ace admired Rohmer, and consciously paid tribute to Rohmer's "The Full Moon Reflecting the Flowers", which was well-known in the Venice Film Festival.
In 1984, the old man Rohmer, who was over 60 years old, looked up and saw the full moon illuminating Paris when the young people were leaving. Even though it has already sunk in the west, it is reluctant to turn to the past under the moonlight. Like Rohmer, Ace grasps the atmosphere of a particular era, looking for a balance between style and detail.
"The Full Moon Reflecting the Flowers" (1984)
The retelling of "The Night Traveler in Paris" may well seem tedious - a middle-aged housewife re-enters the workforce in order to raise her underage children, battered by illness and her husband's betrayal , also trying to re-establish intimacy.
From the very beginning, the director clearly avoided the strong plot in the family ethics theme: the heroine Elizabeth suffered from breast cancer and underwent surgery; her husband abandoned her and her child and formed a new family with her lover, which made the mother and son into financial stress; Elizabeth disapproved of her daughter Judit's active participation in the student political movement, and Matthias, who aspires to be a poet, has a delicate relationship with her mother... These horse-grabbing housework lawsuits are implied to have occurred, but they did not appear in front of the camera.
Ace eschews the tedious elaboration of specific family events and conflicts. He is keenly aware that the decisive moments in life are often in the light-hearted details.
For example, Elizabeth has not yet confessed to the child that the couple is still in the divorce proceedings. The visiting father has thoughtfully aware of the severe financial situation that his daughter will face. . Instead of deliberately constructing a situation of frontal conflict, but carefully organizing daily survival details in a low-profile manner, performance and narrative ultimately become the exchange and sharing of life experience between characters and between characters and audiences. This makes "Night Traveler in Paris" from an implicit path to a state of emotional abundance.
The outer world turns from ecstasy to furious storm,The breakdown of the financial order and emotional network within the family, all the miserable derangements that take place out of sight. The
shots focus on a woman's choice, the play and the filming in a trivial, patient rhythm, focusing on Elizabeth making small changes over and over again, rebuilding her personal life late in Paris, and in the long nights of her life. Ordinary women will not be given a shortcut to overtake in a corner. Elizabeth, a middle-aged woman who was inferior to the dust at first, left the cocoon of a housewife for 16 years and finally entered a wider world independently and step by step.
has a certain amount of inspiration and warmth, but it is not high. Elizabeth can't be the most basic secretarial , but she can be a patient listening midnight talk show operator. The host of the show, Wanda, chose Elizabeth among many job applicants. Although there are factors of empathy among women, she is still a strong and domineering workplace woman and will not give Elizabeth extra compassion. An atmosphere of mutual relief between colleagues is wonderful, but a one-night stand in an office that gets out of hand is also awkward.
An "accident" with a colleague left more than just absurd aftertaste. Elizabeth has since become enlightened. She can enter a new intimate relationship, let go of her previous marriage, and at the same time break free from her narrow relationships and have a new relationship. The lover has a circle of friends whose borders are constantly expanding. She's Matthias and Judit's mom, and she's also Elizabeth who's not affiliated with anyone, and on her birthday, she can party at the pub dance floor with colleagues instead of being surrounded by family.
Elizabeth's inner world has gradually become tougher and stronger. She is no longer a person who is sympathized and sheltered, but has become a person who has the ability to help. She brought home Tallulah, a girl living on the street twice, the first time was She was temporarily taken in out of compassion, and the second time she was resolutely dragged away from the abyss. The director
captures the flow and mood of the characters from the characters' subtle behaviors. There's no happy women's fairy tale here, Elizabeth gets jobs, friendships, and love, but they don't solve all of her problems once and for all. The traces left on Elizabeth for seven years are the trajectory of an ordinary woman's gradual self-improvement on a realistic scale.
There is no definitive happy ending, just like Elizabeth's body damaged by illness cannot be recovered, but she can face her flawed and incomplete self calmly. Facing herself with only one breast left in the mirror, Elizabeth put on an extremely gorgeous dress. Such a moment of female self-acceptance far outweighs those far-fetched myths of the "big lady".
Elizabeth walked out of her long night, watching her children become independent and leave home, and when another round of French elections came, Elizabeth sold and moved out of "the house with her ex-husband". The most moving moment in the whole film is when Elizabeth moved, she gave her daughter an African sculpture symbolizing the continuation of life, and her diary to her son who was already engaged in professional writing.
The son opened his mother's diary, which perfectly explains why the whole film is intertwined with the polyphony of mature women and confused teenagers . This "Night Traveler" past 40 years ago is both the mother's record and the son's. Looking back.
This is not "everything about my mother" from the son's perspective as a professional writer, but in the son's retrospective gaze, the mother's voice becomes clear; this is not a weak woman who passively endured in the face of fate, her personal life Narration and expression enabled her to gain precious subjectivity, and she also witnessed the participation of ordinary people in history with a small force. Her traces of life created another parallel history outside the official narrative.
For Matthias and director Ace, why is the collective shift from hope to disappointment in 1980s France still a memorable time? Maybe not only because of the recalled arc . In the
movie that pays homage to Rohmer, the three children missed the opening of the Hollywood children's horror film "The Pixie", sneaked into another theater from the exit channel, and watched a "Full Moon Reflecting the Flower City", they Accidentally liked this movie,Fascinated heroine Pascal Ogier is troubled, anxious, and finally relieved in the volatile intimacy of her relationship. Whether at that time or at this moment, ordinary people can do their best to love and live, which is the little consolation that creators and audiences can share.
