BFI London Review: Eat the Night Mixes Compelling Teenage Malaise With Conventional Crime Drama

Jane Schoenbrun didn’t invent movies exploring teenage malaise and identity through the lens of pop culture, but in the opening moments of Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel’s Eat the Night, echoes of their two acclaimed features immediately rise to the surface. Much like the protagonist of We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, 17-year-old Apolline (Lila Gueneau) is entirely immersed in an online gaming community, her only contact with an emotionally distant father coming when he tries to dissuade her from spending so much time on it. And, in an unintentional similarity with I Saw the TV Glow––which premiered while this movie was in post-production––Apolline begins interrogating how the fantasy game Darknoon has shaped her identity as she discovers it will soon be terminated without warning. 

But this examination of a lonely, disaffected teen––and how she uses a video game to bond with both her sibling and the wider world beyond her home in Le Havre––is never again centered within Eat the Night. Poggi and Vinel are far more interested in older brother Pablo (Théo Cholbi), a small-time drug dealer who gets into a turf war with a rival gang that plays out as predictably as you expect. As he falls for new associate Night (Erwan Kepoa Falé), the directors are torn between three disparate storylines that never properly coalesce; at every opportunity the filmmakers prioritize a familiar criminal-underworld drama over a more contemporary coming-of-age tale.  

Pablo’s sexuality––never hidden or considered a hindrance in a criminal way of life we’d likely stereotype as toxically masculine––and the tenderness with which the film portrays his relationship with Night was presumably pitched as subverting stereotypes for this genre. But this is hardly unique: The Wire first premiered on HBO more than 20 years ago, in a period where a characterization in this mold would come across as genuinely daring. Even the earnest displays of sensuality whenever we see the pair in bed together aren’t pushing this genre into unfamiliar territory; that series never once portrayed its queer anti-hero as a eunuch. The male leads here are overly familiar archetypes, kept frustratingly separate from the unique coming-of-age tale for much of the runtime; the brief period we get with Apolline leads to groans whenever we cut back to a drug deal or an attack on a rival gang member. 

The driving tension between siblings is Pablo’s relationship with Night, his sister fearing he won’t be around to play the fantasy RPG with her during the final days before the servers are taken offline. In the drama’s later stages we see her unknowingly bond with Night within the gaming world. Poggi and Vinel have fun crafting the uncanny-valley visual sensibility, each character’s fantasy avatar growing to more accurately resemble the actors each time we log back in––the irony not lost that the most vulnerable these characters allow themselves to be is behind a screen, under a different alias. These sequences with Apolline and Night are the film’s strongest, reaffirming that any detour into conventional crime territory is an unwelcome distraction. Why couldn’t this just be a tale of a brand-new romantic relationship blossoming at the same time the backbone of a family relationship began to wither away? Any authenticity the film manages to convey during its quieter moments, exploring how the digital world shapes our connections in the real one, is thrown to one side when over-the-top gang shenanigans return to stretch credulity. 

As a timer continues counting towards the game’s servers being terminated, Poggi and Vinel aim to draw parallels with the urgency of a crime drama that neither reflects the events online nor the younger sister’s inner turmoil. Eat the Night is three films unsatisfactorily blended into one; the only one to make any impact is that for which these filmmakers squandered all potential. 

Eat the Night screened at the BFI London Film Festival and will be released by Altered Innocence in January 2025.

Grade: C