Released last autumn, Lost in the Night (or its original title) Lostos in the noch) offers a night dive into a contemporary Mexico, caught in a row between rampant ultra-capitalism and galloping corruption. An asphyxiating thriller to find now in physical format...
Climbing violence
Emiliano (the brilliant Juan Daniel García Treviño) lost her mother, an activist opposed to the construction of a mine synonymous with ecological disaster for the region. As convinced as her sister was that she was killed, they each track in their own way the different leads that could lead them to her killer. Tracks that all seem to converge towards a lakefront villa, where resides an exuberant couple of artists and their family.
Mexican director Amat Escalante It's not his test run. He had already won the Cannes Film Directing Award in 2013 for his film Heli, and his latest film – The Wild Region (2016) – made a big noise. A brilliant review of the Possession d
Escalante therefore returns with a visceral thriller, close to what had offered us Damián Szifron with Misanthropist Last year. The film opens with a quote from Dostoevski in The dream of a ridiculous man :
« Killing oneself was a question of such indifference that I wanted to wait for a moment when it would make a certain difference. »
Text on red screen. An invading cardboard like the blood that the film and the starting situation promise to spread. A handful of plans throw away in medias rest Its spectator in a weak social conflict around the construction of a mine, whose stakes we will quickly understand. Financial, of course. Ecological too. We will see the only appearance of the mother of Emiliano, trying to mobilize with a handful of activists identified by the police a protest against the environmental aberration of the exploitation of this underground resource. A brief appearance, soon ended by a nocturnal road map at the Lost HighwayOne night torn by a gyrophare and a few shots. Explosion of a dramatic violence and return of this red screen. Dostoevski's quote no longer appears, but we have it in memory...
Be careful, it shakes.
And the film will advance in this way, in sudden ambushes breaking plans of almost contemplative length. Lost in the Night casts his plans, as the brain bursts out of the driver maculing his windshield, the sperm swallowing a hand after a brief masturbation in the cambress or the visions of corpses in putrefaction softened by the water in which they soak. A spout that will pass through the feature film, destabilizing a spectator who will never know what to expect so quickly negotiates his breaks and his nightmare appearancesdesques.
This double tempo of groping (Emiliano is literally "lost in the night") broken by sudden ambush instils a rhythm taking on this film of revenge that contrasts with the poncives of the genre. Where one usually finds a determined hero, thrown on rails and that nothing can stop (The Killer It is a perfect recent illustration, but it also concerns many classics), Emiliano is lost. More and more simmers in an inextricable swamp, until you wander, blind eyes, submerged by a situation that one guesses unmistakable.
The Lake House
An indelible situation which is nevertheless concentrated around this villa of artists. A handful of plans embarking us in their ghostly floating throws us the architectural bases of this out-of-standard, mid-bunker, mid-phase house. From murderous windows to strange artistic installations, from multiple superimposed balconies to the interior garden, it is filmed as the cocoon of the family it houses. A raped cocoon – several attacks attributed to a sectarian group in the region target the paternal of the family – that even Emiliano, while being hired as a man to do everything, can only rarely penetrate.
Climbing it outside, almost constantly. Satellite of a world he tries to probe, to understand. An observer of the artistic projections of adults and their strange works, of the unobtrusive sexual faces of the couple of parents, or of the ways dictated by the social networks of the older daughter of the couple (Ester Expósito). Observer also of the relations of powers that are born and formed before his eyes: collusion with a resolutely corrupt police, digital power enclosed between the manicured nails of the adolescent, resignationary speech of a bourgeois class sedimented by its own social condition. The film brews wide and loses a little more its main character on a capitalist night that seems to have taken the step on the day.
Conclusion
Lost in the Night is therefore the return of Amat Escalante, and a devilfully successful return. On horseback between Night Animals and MisanthropistHe promises a night trip to a violent rural Mexico, gangrenized by his police and narcos. A feature film to discover now in physical format.
Data sheet
DVD Zone B (France)
Publisher: Blaq Out
Duration: 118 min
Release date: 06 February 2024
Video format : 576p/25 - 2.39
Soundtrack Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (and 2.0)
Subtitles French
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