Everything at once everywhere. In what is by far his best film, Isaki Lacuesta deliberately ignores the usual (and often stiff) linear structure of stories “based on real events”. The easiest, simplest and most comfortable thing would have been to start or end the shooting. But Lacuesta wants it all, the before, the during and the after, and putting it right in the middle and splitting the film in two as if it were a melon would have been too obvious (although later on filmmakers like Rodrigo Sorogoyen come out wonderfully). As in our heads, in ‘One year, one night’ past and present are constantly face to face, advancing intertwined hand in hand in one night, that fateful night of November 3, 2015 for those present at the Bataclan in Paris. A night to survive after which nothing will be the same. Lacuesta makes his own the “who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?” of Total Sinister backed by that theory that ensures that time, like life, is something polyhedral that has no beginning or end. Going round and round all the time about the same thing, in a false circular structure that defines the characters played very well by Nahuel Prez Biscayart and Nomie Merlant as individuals and as a couple. In a close and transparent way, demystifying. As if the camera had never been there. Above all, Lacuesta is interested in showing, with apparent purity, fear in all its forms and the treacherous nature of “false” or “real” memories, which lead us to doubt reality, ourselves and everything around us. . Reality continues to be nuanced by the experience of each one, jumping from one thing to another and from there to whatever trying to keep the chaos at bay and under control. ‘One year, one night’ he succeeds, even though this effort to gather “everything everywhere at once” ends up taking its toll after two hours of exhausting melodramatic liveliness. Everything is perhaps too much, somewhat dispersed and at some point unnecessary, in a life experience that is as persistent and stimulating as it is overwhelming and, ultimately, exhausting.
By Juan Pairet Iglesias
@Wanchopex