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A trip to the Laundromat, where she has a good public cry, leads her to meet circus acrobat Petra, who immediately starts making with the lezbo-mack routine. That’s cool, we know the male viewers won’t be objecting to that (and most of the female viewers, come to think of it), so the two play a little cat and mouse game for an hour or so before finally getting into a lip-lock and some serious grinding. But what will happen when ‘boyfriend guy’ finds out – or worse, Camille’s priestly boss!

Cue lots of irate conversations that travel along the lines of “what do you mean by ‘people like me’”. Add to that a little more grinding of female bits, some really awful dialogue, a couple of nipples that look like the volume knob on my stereo, much sweat and an ending that will most assuredly make you say the words, “what the fuck?”

When Night is Falling has enough sex and bodies and sexual tension to make you assume that a man must have conceived it, but on the contrary, the director of the film is a woman, Patricia Rozema. This would be the same Patricia Rozema who was criticized by Jane Austen fans when her version of Mansfield Park hit the screens in the UK, because Rozema had decided to add a lesbian scene to the story that was nowhere to be seen in the novel. Clearly Rozema wants to see girl on girl action in whatever she directs, no matter whether it has basis or not. Of course, male directors do this kind of thing all the time, but they also get called hacks as a result. It would seem, upon viewing both Mansfield Park and this film, that Rozema is most assuredly the female version of just such a hack.

A great example of what happens when someone wants to make a tits and ass movie but has to ‘art’ it up to get funding from government cultural bodies, When Night is Falling should be watched only by those that genuinely enjoy a good lesbian bodyslide. Even if that bodyslide is pre-empted by about two minutes of ‘will they or won’t they’ indecision, a little arguing and... um… circus freaks.

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link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=6318&reviewer=1
originally posted: 11/29/02 10:17:46
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