Poitras captures, reflects relationships in the darkness
NUITS ★★ 1/2 Documentary Directed by: Diane Poitras Running time: 74 minutes
In her cool, contemplative film Nuits, Montreal director Diane Poitras roams the streets with her camera, sporadically interacting with the people she meets.
We don’t see Poitras, but we feel her presence, and occasionally we hear her as she talks with her subjects. Nuits is about — you guessed it — nighttime, the period between sunset and sunrise, and what it means in our lives.
Poitras is as stimulated by the environment as those who inhabit it. And so her film begins with still, surreal images of water. The camera wanders into the city, falling upon a striking aerial view of an apartment complex, then of a single apartment, in which a woman can be seen tending to a sick man, through a large window; a busy, car-lined street is reflected in the glass. That duality — of an intimate, vulnerable moment against the indifference, or at least the continuity, of life in the outside world — runs through Poitras’s film.
A man sits at a desk, facing the wall with his back to the camera, and answers the phone. He is working an emergency helpline and the person on the other end, whom we cannot hear, appears to be in a state of crisis. The man is calm, but concerned.
Kids hang out by a campfire. Their voices are muffled, but we get the gist. A female bus driver, whom we never see, tells of her previous life as a party-hard stripper. A cabbie explains how the night shift has devastated his personal life. A trucker talks about the serenity of rolling through the night, apart from society and the noise of his daytime thoughts.
A prostitute in combat boots (Émilie Laliberté, the only actor in the film) paces on the curb, attempting to engage with passing cars. A photographer meanders about, taking photos of strangers; the night belongs to the young, he explains.
Poitras, who teaches documentary film at UQAM, takes everything in, and moves on. It’s not all fascinating — these are just regular folk, and their observations are rarely surprising. So a certain tedium eventually sets in.
But it would take a concerted effort not to feel a sense of recognition at some of the moments the director captures, or to reflect on one’s own relationship with the dark side of the 24-hour clock. Does nightfall bring discomfort, relief, serenity or anxiety? In Nuits, the answer is all of the above.