Girl In The Night

Bluesky

Have you ever met a girl who impressed you so deeply that you felt desperate to get her attention, but didn’t know how? The girl (Lara Wolf) who visits the late night garage where Rok (Urban Kuntaric) works has his head in a spin. He’s intrigued by her fierce behaviour and her strange injuries, by the way she seems to appear out of nowhere, even before he finds out that she spends her nights out and about on the streets of the city, fighting crime. If you don’t know how to talk to someone, people say, just be yourself. Rok is a kleptomaniac, so he steals her bike.

Quite how disastrous a move this is will not become apparent for an hour and a half. To begin with, it seems to be going well. Consoling her when she comes into the garage, he offers to help her find the thief. She allows him to stitch up a gash on her forehead and to accompany her when she returns a lost ferret, Silvere, to his owner. He comes up with a scheme to get her to visit his home, and gradually positions himself as her sidekick. It’s a dream situation, proudly cruising through the night at her side, even if he doesn’t really believe her claim to have superpowers, even if he worries about her inclination to extreme violence. But the truth will out, and it is obvious that this wonderful life cannot last forever.

Winner of the Best Picture award at Fantastic Fest, this small Slovenian film, made with minimal cast and crew yet epic in its ambitions, charts the story of two lonely people in a city barely aware that they exist. Rok has flatmates who try to look out for him, at one point throwing him a birthday party, but even in that context, because they are a couple, he feels shut out, jealously brooding. At work, he and his colleague barely talk. Only with the girl does his life have obvious meaning, even if they spend their time pursuing the lowliest and least competent of criminals – people whose lives also seem devoid of real purpose.

Meticulously styled, Girl in The Night uses a blend of absurdity and deadpan humour to charm and delight its audience. To watch it is to embrace the magical potential of an ordinary urban night. It will leave you wondering who might be out there in your own city, expanding the boundaries of the possible – and yet it is director Luca Marcetic’s appreciation of the mundane that really makes it work. Catch it if you can – and if you meet a girl like that, trust me, it’s much safer just to ask a pal to have a word on your behalf.

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