Passengers of the Night: the new marvel of Mikhaël Hers (review)

Four years after Amanda's emotional shock, Hers this time visits Paris in the 80s where characters eager to believe in the mirages of life are incarnated. Gorgeous.

The dual territory of Mikhaël Hers' new film (Amanda…) is immediately embodied in a magnificently expressive shot: the face of a young girl is superimposed on a map of the Parisian metro on which magnifier glasses flash like so many destinations towards an inevitably promising stranger. Paris. The 80s. Two compasses, two fantasies. On one side a cinema city worn to the bone, on the other a not so distant era, extirpated from limbo to retain a priori only the wild and vaguely ecstatic beauty (it, in fact, began with the election of Mitterrand and its finally singing aftermath). We recently rediscovered in new copies the electric and prophetic Snow (1981) by Jean-Henri Roger and Juliet Berto, a wonderful film of underworld adventures in the heart of Pigalle, where the neon light poeticized sadness without ever betraying it. Since our 2020s, Hers can only stay at a distance. Politics is at most an obsolete archive showing a youth willing to believe in it. Its passengers of the night are on the outskirts of the vast world. From the large windows of Elisabeth's (Charlotte Gainsbourg) apartment, there are towers. The New Wave Paris is certainly not very far away but only exists as a quotation (cf. Le Grand Action cinema where the heroes, for lack of Birdy find themselves in front Full Moon Nights) or haunted place (the ghost of Rivette encountered in the metro). The magic of this film lies entirely in this almost indescribable way of merging its characters with the framework in which they fit. The different textures of the image, witnesses to scattered grafts (recovered past, re-decorated present), allow the story to be placed in a fragile, hybrid moment, outside of time, almost transitional. And in fact Elisabeth is herself at a crossroads. Freshly divorced, she takes care of her two teenagers who inevitably escape her and clings to a young homeless woman (marvelous Noée Abita) who arrived almost by chance. In this in-between, the city does not promise anything. Elisabeth works at night at a radio switchboard on behalf of a presenter with a smooth voice (Emmanuelle Béart) who is the guardian of her own solitude and that of others. Alone then, but never completely. The Night Passengersis a wonderful film, whose re-enchantment it promises is not illusory since everyone here wants to believe it.

By Mikhaël Hers. With: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Noée Abita, Emmanuelle Béart… Duration: 1h51. Released May 4, 2022