Night Comes On
NIGHT COMES ON, drama, not rated, Jean Cocteau Cinema, 4 chiles
Night Comes On, directed by Jordana Spiro, who co-wrote the screenplay with Angelica Nwandu, is one of those tightly crafted, perfect little movies that tells a complicated story as simply as possible. Angel Lamere (Dominique Fishback) needs to find her father. She has just been released from juvenile detention, is about to turn eighteen, and has nowhere to live — but her probation officer won’t provide her with her father’s address, so she decides to find out from her little sister, whom she hasn’t seen in a few years. If Angel’s situation seems dire, you wouldn’t know it from the way she acts. She’s a cool customer, taking any number of indignities and humiliations in stride, always focused on her next step. Her thoughts sometimes go to the past, before her mother died, but she doesn’t dwell — or she doesn’t want to.
The screenplay is rock solid. Spiro, an actress probably best known for her lead role in the TBS sitcom My Boys, displays a deft directing hand. The acting, however, is where Night Comes On shines brightest. Fishback, who is in every scene, looks out through eyes that have seen too much. Her gaze reflects tired, resigned pain and frustration back at the audience. If she can keep going, so can you, her eyes say — as does the squaring of her shoulders when she sets forth on yet one more leg of her journey.
Just when you think you can’t be more impressed by a young actress, you meet Angel’s little sister, Abby (Tatum Marylin Hall), ten years old and living in foster care. Hall is, simply put, amazing. Most of her lines are delivered as if they were not written but ad-libbed, and she has natural comic timing — a welcome skill in a movie this serious.
Abby has been a functional orphan for most of her life. Angel, who has seen her own share of foster homes, prefers to interpret the world in silence, but Abby is an irrepressible chatterbox with the quick critical mind of a chess player. She worships her sister, though Angel doesn’t think she deserves such exalted status.
The rest of the characters in the movie are men, all of whom attempt to exert a level of power over Angel. Some of them have bad intentions, and some of them don’t understand that even their good intentions are cruel. Angel can endure anything they do to her, but she shouldn’t have to — and neither should Abby. Abby knows it, and in the end, Angel has begun to get it, too. — Jennifer Levin