THE PASSENGERS OF THE NIGHT - Mark Reviews Movies

The Passengers of the Night, KimStim

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 29, 2023

Set in Paris during the early 1980s, The Passengers of the Night follows a woman and her family—by blood and, in the case of one person, by circumstance—through ordinary lives on the constant verge of change. It's a fairly uneventful tale in terms of plot, of course, but that gets at a certain truth: Even the most significant changes in life and the world eventually enter the realm of the ordinary.

For Élisabeth (Charlotte Gainsbourg), change has come and become everyday life by the time we meet her. She's recently divorced from a husband and now finds herself raising two teenaged kids, Matthias (Quito Rayon-Richter) and Judith (Megan Northam), on her own. They seem to have it all, living in a spacious apartment in the city, but Élisabeth is unemployed and soon-to-be financially struggling.

Suffering from insomnia, she finds some solace in a nightly radio show hosted by Vanda Dorval (Emmanuelle Béart), and on the advice of her children, Élisabeth writes a letter to the host, who asks to meet with her. The most unanticipated result of the meeting is Vanda hiring Élisabeth to take over the telephone switchboard for her show.

From there, things improve—or don't—and become normal, only for the process to repeat. The key one for the narrative is Élisabeth meeting Talulah (Megan Northam), a young woman who has been living on the streets for a couple years and is interviewed by Vanda. Spotting the woman sitting on a bench after the show, Élisabeth invites Talulah to stay in the storage room above her apartment. Soon enough, she becomes like part of the family.

Talulah is our entryway into the story, by the way, as we follow her on the night of the 1981 election, with the streets filled with celebration. So much change and hope seem possible in that moment, but a couple years later, Talulah is still in the same situation. Co-writer/director Mikhaël Hers' film isn't especially political, except in the way it subtly suggests the course of government policy never really offers the change so often promised—particularly for people like Talulah.

We watch these four characters bond, separate, reunite, and adapt to these new circumstances as if nothing has happened—even as their lives become completely different. Élisabeth starts a romance with Hugo (Thibault Vinçon), with the excitement quickly becoming comfort. The aimless Matthias finds some structure in writing poetry, and Judith moves out to focus on politics. Talulah disappears, only to find her way back in desperate times to the only home she has known.

The relaxed pacing of The Passengers of the Night allows us to feel that passage of time and discover the rhythm of these lives. It's worth it, especially when Hers ultimately merges this story with archival footage of Paris during the '80s, and the film finds a deeper meaning in the notion of history mostly existing as a string of ordinary people in ordinary moments.

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