The Longest Night

In the midst of a violent tropical typhoon, a young man struggles to fall asleep. His thoughts are the only source of light in the dark. The film was partially shot in Hanoi during the worst storm the country had seen in seventy years.

In the beginning, the image is black; a storm rumbles softly, seeming to blow against the back of the screen, which we imagine to be dripping with rain. This blackness is someone’s dream: a young boy who is sleeping with his head buried in his palm, dreaming in blue subtitles. The boy remembers: a hurricane, perhaps this one, perhaps another. But are the ‘rememberer’ and the dreamer the same? These memories are precise, perfectly documentary. They recall branches that weren’t cut in time, as clouds were already looking threatening, of the power being cut off at seven p.m., of candles that couldn’t be found in town because no shops were open. In the end, the city is revealed to us, dark, battered by rain, and once more we wonder: is this liquid, sparkling image of Hanoi the view from the little boy’s bedroom window, or is it his dreamscape? Anyway, he is not actually quite asleep; the rumbling of the storm and the murmur of his memories has made this too difficult. He opens one eye, closes it again, turns over… It is perhaps only at the point where darkness returns at the end of the film, that he is finally asleep. Meanwhile, we viewers can say, as we return to daylight, that it is rare to see a film that so skilfully and swiftly disproves the idea that dreams and reality are two opposing things.

Jérôme Momcilovic