How soon is too soon to make a dramatised film about a recent tragedy? One Year, One Night is a thoughtful, unsensational feature dealing with the Islamist terror attack on the Bataclan theatre in Paris in 2015, which left 90 rock fans dead and hundreds more critically wounded. These events are still raw in memory but, in fairness to Spanish writer-director Isaki Lacuesta, he is working here from the eyewitness testimony of Bataclan survivor Ramón Gonzalez, who published a memoir in 2018 titled Peace, Love and Death Metal. A main competition contender in Berlin, this Spanish-French co-production is a frank exploration of post-traumatic stress and its destructive effects, solidly crafted and finely acted, if a little overlong and muddled at times. Post-festival interest should be healthy given the film’s newsworthy subject and the classy pedigree of its prize-winning leads, Nahuel Pérez Biscayart and Noémie Merlant.
The Bataclan massacre was part of a coordinated series of shootings and bombings across the French capital on November 13, 2015, which claimed 130 lives in total. But One Year, One Night does not promise a definitive account of these events, only a tightly focused chronicle of the traumatic aftershocks suffered by a single couple of survivors over the months following the massacre. Attractively scruffy Argentinean Steve Buscemi lookalike Biscayart (120 Beats Per Minute) plays Ramón, a Spanish emigré working a high-pressure office job in Paris, while Merlant (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) co-stars as his French social-worker girlfriend Céline.
One Year, One Night opens with stunned survivors Ramón and Céline walking home from the Bataclan attack. But within days, they seem able to pick up the mundane routine of their shared lives without too much psychological damage. They return to work, go partying with friends, and make mocking jokes about the trite messages of support flooding in from around the world.
Only later do the traumatic aftershocks start. While Céline insists on repressing and forgetting her ordeal, even hiding it from her family, Ramón becomes equally obsessive about remembering and recording it in forensic detail. Struck by severe anxiety attacks, he takes a long break from his job, switches career plans, and considers returning to the relative safety of rural Spain. Meanwhile, she struggles with mounting stress at work, where anti-Arab racism is a volatile issue among her multicultural clientele of troubled teenagers, eventually drawing her into an explosive confrontation. After the Bataclan experience exposes the faultlines in their relationship, they start to unravel as a couple.
Largely shot in intimate close-up on hand-held cameras, the film’s more personal two-hander scenes have a freewheeling, semi-improvised energy which smacks of emotional authenticity. That said, an over-generous 130-minute runtime allows too much room for the recurring, repetitive back-and-forth of relationship breakdown. A late plot twist, in which Céline seem to radically rewrite her memory of the Bataclan attack, feels confusing and superfluous. But visceral, fine-grained performances from Merlant and Bicayart keep most of the action grounded and engrossing.
Lacuesta handles flashbacks to the massacre with sensitivity, slicing them into short fragments that recur throughout the non-linear narrative. Gunfire is only heard off screen, the terrorists never visible, bullet wounds and dead bodies glimpsed just fleetingly. The key scene, which features Céline hiding in an upstairs dressing room packed with other terrified concert-goers, is a study in claustrophobic, stomach-knotting tension rather than action-thriller excess. The film’s ever-present audio track, heavy on distorted guitar chords, ominous crackles and percussive thuds, is a richly layered blend of music and sound design that serves a powerful dramatic purpose.
Director: Isaki Lacuesta
Screenwriters: Isa Campo, Isaki Lacuesta, Fran Araújo
Cinematography: Irina Lubtchansky
Editing: Fernando Franco, Sergi Dies
Music: Raül Refree
Sound design: Eva Valiño
Producers : Ramón Campos, Jérôme Vidal
Production companies: Mr Fields and Friends (Spain), Bambú Producciones (Spain), La Termita Films (Spain), Una Noche La Película (Spain)
World sales: Studiocanal, Berlin
Venue: Berlin International Film Festival (Competition)
In French, Spanish
130 minutes
