Review for The Night is Young

In a distant future Paris, two thieves, Marc and Hans owe a lot of money to a ruthless American woman who gives them two weeks to pay it back. Their plan is to steal the cure for a disease that is killing people who have sex, without love.

To do this they recruit Alex, a young card hustler who has the quick hands that they will need to pull off the heist. Joining the team is Anna, Marc's mistress who Alex becomes enamoured by, though she only loves Marc. To make things worse Alex's ex-girlfriend Lise has not gotten over him leaving her and will do anything to get him back. This 1980s heist film by director Leos Carax stars a young Juliette Binoche and Julie Delpy in early roles.

This film is a confusing mess. I watched trying to figure out what was going on and to be honest, the more I did, the more it confused me. The whole 'future' aspect is so poorly thought out that I almost chose to ignore it as it had no real impact on the film story. When you consider that this was 1986 in the middle of the initial AIDS scare it is almost insulting that they could create a film where sex without love is the disease that's killing people. I understand that it is possibly an allegory of this time, but it really left a bitter taste in the mouth.

The heist element of this film is fine in general, although a lot of the details are brushed over so quickly that I'm still not sure how it was actually done. This isn't the meticulous montage planning of something like Ocean's Eleven, but just random scenes and then all of a sudden it's done. The ending is then so stupid that you do wonder why they didn't do what they did in the first place and save themselves all the hassle?

The acting is actually pretty good with an early Juliette Binoche and Julie Delpy proving why they went on to be such big stars. The performance by Denis Lavant as Alex is amazing and there are flashes of DeNiro's Travis Bickle in the way he moves and holds himself in this film which is just fascinating. What ruins it is the bizarre shadow boxing/dancing to David Bowie which looked eerily too much like Footloose for my liking.

Extras include a pointless deleted scene which I'm not even sure why it was cut, other than for time, a reel of 'outtakes and rushes' which is almost a look at rehearsals for the film and not the laugh a minute things you would expect and then finally a trailer. These are fine in general, but there really needed to be some sort of look back at the film, new interview with Carax or Binoche about the making of it or someone to at least explain why this film is so loved as I simply couldn't see it.

The Night is Young is one of those films that people will talk about as a cinematic masterpiece and visually it is. It's just a shame that the actual story (you know, the meat of the film) is so weak that I had to ignore most of the premise to watch a half decent heist film. It's not a bad film, it's just not a film that I will be watching again. The Night is Young and so am I, so I'll go and watch something else.