Peter Bradshaw 

After the Night review – laboured Lisbon ghetto drama

It's not clear why Basil de Cunha's drama about a moody Lisbon ghetto dweller did so well on the festival circuit, writes Peter Bradshaw
  
  

After the Night
Opaque … After the Night. Photograph: PR

After the Night, by the young Portuguese director Basil de Cunha, has won golden opinions on the festival circuit. I have to confess it defeated me. The action seems laboured, opaque and inaccessible, and based on an improv-style way of acting and devising story that does not make the proceedings any more real. In fact, it only seems to highlight how disconcertingly implausible they sometimes are. The story takes place in the grimmest ghettos of Lisbon; at its centre is Sombra (Pedro Ferreira), a moody loner who owes a drug dealer a lot of money, so finds himself having to help at a violent robbery to make it up; an arresting idea but one weirdly drained of suspense or tension, and that points up a nagging question: is it entirely believable that tough guys would really allow an untrained nobody like Sombra to come along on a job as difficult as this – someone who is highly likely to screw things up? The issue is made even cloudier by the improvised confrontational shouting that so many of the characters do to each other – in scenes set up like acting classes. There are some good moments, and Sombra's encounters with his exasperated auntie are very engaging. But After the Night is strangely inert.

 

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