Catherine Deneuve and director André Téchiné belong to the same generation and have made many films together. If my count is correct, ‘L’adieu à la nuit‘, which hit theaters in 2019, was the 8th film they collaborated on. Many of Téchiné‘s films are with and about young people, and in a way ‘L’adieu à la nuit‘ also falls into this category. It is about young people, but in a serious context, already addressed by several other films – that of Islamic radicalization. It is a difficult theme and ‘L’adieu à la nuit‘ fails to go deep in its exploration, or perhaps it was not even the authors’ intention to do so. The main quality of the film is that it anables the meeting between Deneuve, in extraordinary physical and artistic form, and some of the talented actors of a generation half a century younger in age.
The heroine of the film, Muriel, leads a life that can be considered ordinary and better than that. She owns a horse farm and an orchard in the area where the Pyrenées meet the Mediterranean Sea. Most of the action takes place during the first five days of spring, and the landscape of blossoming trees, animals and the farm are constant reminders of the good life, French style. Alex, Muriel’s nephew, returns to say goodbye before going abroad for a while. The boy no longer behaves exactly as she knew him. Muriel learns that he has converted to Islam, perhaps under the influence of Lila, a young Muslim woman who lives nearby, who otherwise appears to be a nice girl and a dedicated nurse in a nursing home. Muriel hardly accepts the situation, but she accepts it. Alex’s change, however, turns out to be much more drastic. The young couple is under the influence of a radical Islamic group and had decided to go to Syria together. What can the grandmother do to save the grandson? What does ‘save him’ actually mean? One way or another, family life is destroyed and reconciliation impossible, at least in the short term.
André Téchiné and his scriptwriters did not know or did not want to explore the reasons for the radicalization of the two young people. The insistence on presenting the idyllic life the young people renounce to proves that the point of view is Muriel’s. The heroine decides to fight a force she doesn’t understand and knows that the effect of her decisions cannot but have an impact on her grandson’s life. Catherine Deneuve is formidable (again) in this role, the only thing we can fault her for is that she looks so good that she looks more like Alex’s older sister than his grandmother. Two extremely talented actors play the roles of the two young people who fall under the influence of militant Islam: Kacey Mottet Klein and Oulaya Amamra (who was also formidable in ‘Divines’). The decision not to insist on the political aspects in favor of those related to the psychology of the characters and the relationships between them turns what could have been a political film into a family drama. But even that is no small thing, considering the quality of the production and acting performances.