WHEN NIGHT IS FALLING
[Spoilers]
A film review by Max Hoffmann
Copyright 1995 Max Hoffmann
Although it won the Best Screenplay Award at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, WHEN NIGHT IS FALLING ultimately proves that a woman (in this case writer/director Patricia Rozema) can make a film as badly as any man. The film is *so* bad, in fact that its high camp watermark might make it a candidate for the next BAD MOVIES WE LOVE book. Rozema makes quite a departure from her earlier, brilliant I'VE HEARD THE MERMAIDS SINGING, and turns in a tepid, softcore epic worthy of Zalman King (RED SHOES DIARY).
While the Canadian location is never specified, we suspect it's a few miles from LAKE CONSEQUENCE, due to truck-sized plot holes and missing character bone structure. Rozema has taken a paint-by-numbers approach to lesbian romantic adventure: take two disparate, but exotic women from different worlds (in this case, the Circus and a seminary), give one of them a beautiful but boorish man to choose from, and have a crises to make one of them emotionally vulnerable. Also have one of the women be incredibly brazen in her pursuit of the indecisive beginner. Preferably, make the romance interracial or cross-cultural (Rozema does both).
In this case we have Camilla (Pascal Bussires), a stone-faced Isabelle Hubert wanna-be who teaches mythology in a strict Protestant seminary. She's emotionally distraught from hiding her passionate affair with fellow faculty member, Martin (a throw-away performance by Henry Czerny, the evil woofcake of BOYS OF ST. VINCENT). We know that she's really torn over the conflict between her religious convictions and pre-wedlock sex, because she's sends him to work with a sloppy kiss on the doorstep, wearing only his pajama tops! (Focus, Camilla, focus!)
Camilla's emotional vulnerability is heightened by her dog, who mysteriously bounds out of her office and dies in an alley-way, with no evident sign of injury. The distraught Camilla installs the pooch in her Frigidaire, then heads to the laundromat for relief. A chance encounter there with the exotic Petra (Rachel Crawford) leads Camilla into new territory. Petra is a circus acrobat! Knowing a good thing when she sees it, Petra pulls a switcheroo on the laundry so Camilla will have to track her down at the weird warehouse Circus where she performs exotic dances.
Camilla's first glimpse of Petra in her "other world" of the circus is when Petra steps out of a silhouette against a drumskin to reveal shes done up in a skin-tight leather jump suit, with pilot goggles like Rocky the flying squirrel. (Who could possibly resist that?) Petra also has one of the best lesbian pick-up lines of all time, "Camilla! I like that name, it sounds like "Come here.'"
Zalman King dished up a Chinese steambath for Joan Severance and Billy Zane to do the nasty in at LAKE CONSEQUENCE. Rozema creates a never-never circus world with disco lights on the ceiling, and interior decorating in Petra's trailer that would make Andy Warhol swoon! (Just how much they pay you to perform in a Canadian circus).
Over-the-top background characters are used to make Camilla's and Petra's lack of motivation more believable. The circus is run by kooky but lovable Tim (Don McKeller with an accent he picked up somewhere between Transylvania and Detroit) and streetwise Tory (Tracy Wright). In one of their many altercations, Tory is accusing Tim of being incompetent. "Oh, yeah," shoots back Tim, "what about that raccoon act you did!" Tory pauses and sighs, "How could I know they'd be so selfish!" Sure, it doesn't make sense, but neither do any of the major plot points.
Softcore flicks with woman-on-woman action aimed at straights usually have a musical key to alert viewers that something is about to happen. In NIGHT IS FALLING, an irritating cello solo begins sawing away whenever these gals are ready to shed their clothes and have at it. The love scenes are interspersed with a pseudo Cirque d'Soleil trapeze act between two women to symbolize the dangerous balance they're in. (The speechless high-wire artists prove much more interesting than the two main characters).
The rest of the plot doesn't much matter, as it offers few surprises. Lighting, pace and tone for each scenes comes straight from Zalman King. Rozema pays a nod to PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT with a ludicrous surprise as the credits roll. (Remember the Judy Doll/kite landing in the Japanese monastery?) Camilla has buried her beloved dog in a pile of soap flakes (uh, snow!) before trying to do herself in. After being revived by her beloved, Camilla head towards the international Circus Festival in San Francisco with Petra. We see a paw emerge from the snow ... and voila! The pooch bounds, resurrected, across the snowy landscape, (in slow motion of course). It's an appropriate ending for a film that is a dog, in every sense of the word. We can only assume that like River Phoenix in MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO, the dog was a victim of narcolepsy. Or maybe he tried to make it through the script.
Viewers wanting answers to missing character motivation and more can meet Screenwriter/Director Patricia Rozema when her film screens at the Mill Valley Festival on Saturday, October 14 at 10 PM, in the Sequoia II theater in Mill Valley. Contact BASS for ticket info.
Maxwell Hoffmann film critic, OutNOW!
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