27/05/2023 - CANNES 2023: A chance Parisian run-in gets romantic, talky and decidedly French in Alex Lutz’s Un Certain Regard closer

After his clever mockumentary Guy [+see also:
trailer
film profile] closed the 2018 Critics’ Week section, actor-director-comedian Alex Lutz is once again summoned to conclude a Cannes Film Festival sidebar – this time around, the 2023 Un Certain Regard programme, out of competition. Strangers by Night [+see also:
trailer
film profile] stars director Lutz himself, who also co-wrote it together with Hadrien Bichet and perennial César favourite Karin Viard, Lutz’s main co-star here.

Although the “Before Sunrise genre” is far older than the Richard Linklater film(s), the label is instantly familiar, so let’s stick it on here. There can also be little doubt that Strangers by Night has consciously sent a couple of nods towards the Linklater scenario and picked a few ingredients, but also likewise consciously refrained from using a few other ones.

On a seemingly ordinary day on the Paris Metro, our two titular strangers bump into one another so literally that they start shouting at each other, demanding a proper excuse for their rude manners. No such luck. Seemingly one minute later, they can be seen together, energetically fornicating inside a photo booth (are those really still around?), and then getting ready to part ways. But as the genre stipulates, there’s more to be done here – especially with that “by Night” bit in the title… Some tentative romance and intimate soul-searching? Pourquoi pas?

He introduces himself as Aymeric and she as Nathalie. They’re both married with teenage kids and are devoted to their spouses, so “this relationship won’t go anywhere, bud”, as Nathalie’s remark so bluntly reads in the English subtitles (which also at several points refer to one “Sophia Lauren” – unlikely to be the unknown sister of US designer Ralph, but rather that Italian screen legend Loren). The talk is plentiful and best enjoyed by a Francophone audience, to which both stars are greatly familiar, to top things off. Through a more foreign lens, the film probably feels like that perfect Cannes movie they would have an audience watch in a fictional movie about… Cannes. While all this talky Frenchness can feel like a mouthful – a conspicuously rehearsed one at that – both Lutz and Viard are doubtlessly very likeable, personally and character-wise. A little story twist certainly further justifies one’s objections. We also get a gate-crashed party, a free Chinese dinner, similarly free champagne in a swinger’s club with Noémie de Lattre and Jérôme Pouly in colourful attendance, and iPhones thrown into the Seine. And, of course, there’s always Paris, almost if not entirely as romantic as the Helsinki enjoyed by Aki Kaurismäki’s two strangers in Fallen Leaves [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], another Cannes 2023 chance meeting story, albeit a decidedly less talky one.

Strangers by Night was produced by France’s Maneki Films and Belgium’s Versus Production, with international sales by StudioCanal.