A THOUSAND TIMES GOOD NIGHT
Director: Erik Poppe
Cast: Juliette Binoche, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Chloe Annett, Lauryn Canny
Rating: (M)
Three stars (out of five)
A Thousand Times Good Night (Rialto) follows Rebecca (Juliette Binoche), who not only is a passionate war photographer but also has a picture-perfect home life in an Irish farmhouse with a hunky marine biologist husband and two sparky daughters.
How can she reconcile the two strands of her life?
We first observe Rebecca in the field and it soon becomes clear that her assignment is both dangerous and morally ambiguous.
However, I know that a real-life photojournalist has done a similar photo essay, so it is not unrealistic.
Rebecca is soon home having to justify the risks she takes to her husband, Marcus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau).
As she is clearly going through a form of post-traumatic stress, she firmly believes that this time she is quitting and is easily able to reassure him that staying safe is her new priority.
We, the audience, are not so convinced.
A Thousand Times Good Night is intellectually stimulating without managing to engage us emotionally.
The scenes where Rebecca is working are gripping and real, so it is unsurprising to learn that director Erik Poppe was a successful photojournalist himself.
Where it fails is the home life.
Technically, all the elements should work, but they never manage to splutter into believable life, so Binoche is reduced to looking sadly into the distance over a gloomy GUS soundtrack.
- Christine Powley
