Toute une nuit

A hot summer evening in Brussels: couples dance in bars and cafés, part outside homes, or escape together under the darkness of night; some discover or reignite romance, some end it, while still more grasp tightly to each other in the last moments of dying love. In Chantal Akerman’s singular TOUTE UNE NUIT, the modern city and its inhabitants are captured in fragmentary, elliptical visions of desire, frustration, and loneliness, with more than two dozen characters appearing in fleeting vignettes that tease the possibility of larger narratives. Alongside her magnum opus JEANNE DIELMAN, TOUTE UNE NUIT is one of the legendary Belgian director’s greatest triumphs: a charming, avant-garde melodrama that is as much about the weight of time as the longing for connection.