Nuit #1

Anne Émond : 2011
Night #1

Clara and Nikolaï meet at a rave. They return to Nikolaï's apartment and frantically make love. Afterwards, instead of parting, the two lovers divulge their deepest secrets to one another, revealing astonishing insights about their lives as they both venture willingly into the darkest parts of themselves. Nicolaï is a beautiful loner, one with great ambition which he's unable to articulate to his peers. At thirty-one years old, he leads a simple and frugal life. He applies himself to reading the great classics of literature but never finishes a book he has begun. Unable to submit to any schedule, he finds himself unfit for work. He envisions big projects and has expansive ideas but, inevitably and despite himself, loses sight of them before they are realised. Clara, like Nikolaï, seems not to be made for this world. She leads a double life. By day, she works as a third grade teacher; by night, she is a compulsive party-girl, exorcising or forgetting her vaunted hopes. She goes out every night, gets drunk and high, invites high-voltage sexual combinations, all the while desperately trying to fill an emotional void yet never succeeding. Though they are tempted to animas by all-too-common and divisive gender politics, politics they simultaneously fear and embrace, the friction between them is trumped by a common determination to bridge the gap that they realise afflicts the women and men of their lost, but far from hopeless, generation. Anne Émond's award-winning directorial debut premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2011.