Black Night

It's clear that someone here has overdosed on David Lynch and Terry Gilliam: mimicking the baroque, revisionist retro feeling of Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen), leavened with heaping helpings of E. Elias Merhige (Shadow of the Vampire), director Olivier Smolders' Black Night is an almost incomprehensible film. Telling an elliptical tale about a conservator at the Natural Sciences Museum named Oscar (Fabrice Rodriguez), who is obsessed with the death/identity of his young sister, Black Night takes place in a world where the sun only shines 15 seconds each day and pre-planned intervals of music and poetry break up the midnight monotony. Smolders seems to be saying that humans mask their true feelings—sexual, spiritual, social—in a cocooned existence of carefully controlled elements (incidentally, the film features more stunning shots of insects than you would find anywhere other than an entomology documentary). But by the time the giant pupa gives birth to a naked redhead in Oscar's bed, most viewers will have lost the narrative thread, so to speak. Like Lynch and Gilliam, Smolders exhibits amazing visual acumen, but when all is said and done, his motives and his movie remain somewhat of a mystery. Optional. [Note: DVD extras include deleted scenes, interviews, and behind the scenes featurettes. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a visually striking but cryptic film.] (B. Gibron)