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‘Eat the Night’ Review: A Dying MMORPG Evokes the Apocalypse in a Tender-Hearted Queer French Drama
'Eat the Night,' which premiered in Director's Fortnight at Cannes, complements a neo-noir plot with an MMORPG that will discontinue its servers.
How wrong it is, then, that movies have largely continued to show gaming in a shallow, nonliteral manner, portrayed as thoughtless joy buzzers, rather than indicating how a title handles or commands attention. Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel don’t take such shortcuts with their thriller “ Eat the Night.” Though the narrative spine is a turf war between small-time drug dealers, the Cannes-launched French feature searches for its big emotions in the digital realm, with long in-game sequences that follow a teenager compelled to escape the bleak world around her. Falé and Cholbi find subtle notes to the pair’s interplay, but the actors don’t share the fiery chemistry to launch a passionate, doomed romance; their first kiss is a bit of a rushed surprise.
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