This is the first time in history that I’ve watched something by Amat Escalante and didn’t walk away amazed in some way. I’m a little conflicted. Without question this might be his most beautifully shot film to date. Seriously – from the opening frame to the closing shot everything is crafted & framed as if it was shot by 70’s era Nester Almendros (lots of sunsets, magic hour, etc). Now…The basic premise is interesting but gets lost in the end.
A common theme for a lot of new releases I’ve watched this year involve the story falling apart in the second half and
Lost In The Night is no exception. But regardless of how “imperfect” this may be, there’s still something special about it that got me to write down my initial thoughts. The story of
Lost In The Night is about a young man infiltrating a system in an effort to solve the mystery of his missing activist mother. Naturally class divide plays a huge part in this story (like all Escalante films) but this is his most in your face film about classism & corruption in Mexico.
The problem is that by the end of the movie, the missing mother and her activism are almost forgotten about.
Our main character is supposed to be solving this mystery/cover-up but he gets sidetracked by a love interest. Young men have historically been known to lose sight of a goal over the attention of a woman but this seems pretty egregious. I dunno…maybe I missed something?
It should be noted how, more than ever, modern architecture is used in Mexican cinema (and just modern cinema in general) to represent “evil”. I don’t like this blanket belief system that any design that’s modern equates bad or elitist or out of touch. But that’s just the modern design student in me.
When we’re introduced to the wealthy family that might have been involved in the disappearance of the protagonist’s mother, police are on the scene. There’s this subconscious association with modern architecture and criminality…
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| Lost In The Night |
Escalante’s mentor/former collaborator also does this with
Post Tenebras Lux. Our first glimpse of modern design is associated with a husband & wife having marital problems…
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| Post Tenebras Lux |
The Mexican film
Time Share takes place in an ultra modern setting where everything goes wrong.
Some critics have called
Lost In The Night “Lynchian” but to me - it’s a combination of Carlos Reygadas meets Chantal Akerman (we seriously need to abolish the Lynchian term). I guess it's considered Lynchian by some because there's a shot like this in the film?
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| Lost Highway / Lost In The Night |
Escalante is on record numerous times name-dropping Akerman as a source of influence...
Whenever we shoot a film, there’s always a shot that we say, ‘oh this is the Jeanne Dielman shot,’ because there’s always someone at the sink washing dishes. It’s a sad anecdote but when we were shooting The Untamed, there’s a scene of a woman washing the dishes and we were filming her from behind. The day after that, I read on the news that Chantal Akerman had died. The day she died, we were shooting and said, ‘this is the Jeanne Dielman shot. - Amat Escalante, extraextramagazine.com
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| Jeanne Dileman / Lost In The Night |
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Jeanne Dileman / Lost In The Night
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Another Akerman-esque moment from Lost In The Night...
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Hotel Monterey / Lost In The Night
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This does have replay value and I will certainly revisit it a few more times before the year is over. Right now I’m just a little underwhelmed. It’s like watching an A student get a B-/C+on a test. But that could all change after another viewing.
