A romantic reverie in a minor key at the Buttes-Chaumont
Sébastien Betbeder’s little film is a mixture of things, mainly, perhaps Slant review of it at Film Comment Selects says) environmental psychology and romantic idealism; a romantic love affair anyway, that gets sidetracked by an nocturnal obsession with a Paris park. The film begins with a history review of the Paris Parc des Buttes-Chaumont with a soft, enticing young female voiceover (by Nathalie Boutefeu ) that runs back to surprisingly vivid moving images of the park in the nineteenth century. The young lady describes and we see open spaces, a waterfall, an artificial lake, and a temple, and long-ago crowds of children in dark clothes and men in bowler hats. Buttes-Chaumont stands high up in the north-eastern corner of Paris in the 19th arrondissement, and when the story takes place on warm summer days it’s full of people in the daytime, empty at night. With this prologue the film jumps to a party at a Parisian apartment where Théodore (Pio Marmaï) ) meets Anna (Agathe Bonitzer), they dance, and there’s good chemistry. They wander outside to the park and Théodore persuades Anna to climb over the fence to wander inside it. They make love, and decide to spend the night lying entwined under a wide leafy tree. And then next morning by the Métro they exchange coordinates and agree to meet and spend the next night there too. In the nights that follow they explore more of the park, and the nocturnal meetings there become a compulsion on both parts, perhaps a physical and psychological necessity for Théodore. In the daytime she’s an art history major and he’s an at-home proof reader, but they begin just sleeping in the daytime. And he suffers from severe asthma, though in the park at night, he’s okay. They find an abandoned pavilion and spend their nights there, though there are mediators and a nutty vagabond writer (Fabrice Adde) also in the park at night. And then things start to go wrong, and then the film itself starts to come apart, unable to sustain its various strands. But it has a certain very French and Parisian charm, seducing one at the outset and then becoming very subtly and strangely sad and upsetting, all the while interspersed with an indie-rock soundtrack that includes Antlers, Beach House, and That Summer, and nice twilight and dawn images of this quite lovely park, which few foreign tourists are likely to ever see.
Anna’s older sister Suzanne (Sarah Le Picard) learns of this obsession and urges her to abandon it, and she persuades Théodore to go to a family beach house to take a break, but he has an asthma attack after three days and insists he must get back to the park. When they return to the Buttes-Chaumont Théodore becomes more possessive, there is a clash with the kooky writer that turns violent and Anna flees, her occasional voiceover ending with the declaration that she never saw Théodore or returned to the park again.
Early on there’s a short interview with a (real) psychiatrist indeed specialized in environmental psychology (Dr. Emmanuel Siety) who describes how this park can have a positive power as a place. He learned of a man who lived near the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont and walked through it every day on the way to work. When his work transferred him to the city of Nantes he fell into a depression and became so incapacitated he was confined to a wheelchair. The psychologist recommended his resettling back in his old neighbourhood and, monitoring his daily returns to the park, says they gradually brought him back to health. There is also the suggestion of something occult and hidden in a cave the group of mediators think lies under the park containing an enormous life-giving energy. But it’s also true that the park above all belongs to the public, and to the many activities that take place there in the daytime, especially during the summertime when this story unfolds.
Nights with Théodore is initially sexy and romantic and French; atmospheric and instructive; finally a little strange and creepy. It’s an interesting little film, and at least one reviewer called it “Rohmeresque,” but it may try to stuff too much into one package and thus undercuts its main theme of the summer romance that, however conventional it may seem, is the essential thread that holds things together. And so a film that begins well loses its charm, though Betbeder’s intent is clearly to focus on mysterious, haunting and spooky aspects of the place, at least as much as on the couple.
Les nuits avec Théodore, only 67 mins., a TV movie, whose original title IMDb lists as Je suis une ville endormie, was shown at the Turin Festival, which gives detailed information. It is roughly his fourth short feature; his longest is 81 minutes. It opened in Paris 13 March, receiving fair reviews (the Allociné press rating is 3.1 based on 11 reviews). It played in Film Comment Selects at Lincoln Center, NYC, 22 February 2013. It was screened for this review in connection with the San Francisco International Film Festival, 25 April-May 9, where it received the FIPRESCI Award.
Director: Sébastien Betbeder
Writer: Sébastien Betbeder
Stars: Pio Marmaï, Agathe Bonitzer, Sarah Lepicard
Runtime: 59 min
Country: France
Film Rating: 
