Night Call

Jonathan Feltre

Michiel Blanchart's Night Call, the Belgian filmmaker's first feature, is a solid and promising thriller. The film is a Hitchcockian man on the run flick that has lead Jonathan Feltre ripping around Brussels pursued by both gangsters and the police. Feltre plays Mady, a locksmith whose titular job helping out a young woman claiming to be locked out of her apartment leads him into mortal danger. The femme, named Claire (Natacha Krief), turns out not to live there and is using Mady to filch a bag of cash (the film's MacGuffin). Mady is soon a wanted man and leads the viewer on a nocturnal and murky prowl of Brussels' brothels, nightclubs, and gangster lairs. He even gets caught up and uses to his advantage a Black Lives Matter demonstration.

Some critics have criticized the film for a facile use of the Black Lives Matter issue, but I think a genre film like this is not really the format for a full investigation of such weighty themes. Night Call deftly integrates the issue within its somewhat formulaic framework. Night Call does show police brutality, but the world Blanchart and co-scenarist Gilles Marchand (Harry He's Here to Help, Who Killed Bambi?) have conjured is a chaotic urban landscape in which combatants are engaged in a survival of the fittest. Not for nothing is the film bracketed by two close-ups of wary German Shepherds. Being a locksmith, Mady has more survival tools than most at his disposal. There are few, if any, false notes by the cast. My favorite performance was by Jonas Bloquet as a thug with secrets. The film portrays its characters not as archetypes of hero and villain, but in shades of grey. Not an earthshaking movie by any means, Night Call holds out the hope for more expansive and personal films from Mr. Blanchart.