Where The Night Stands Still

Bluesky

Have you ever wondered how would a bastard child between Lav Diaz’ DIY filmmaking and the once-popular “mumblecore” cinema might look like if it were sprinkled with some artistic ambition? Ready or not, the answer is here in the form of Liryc Dela Cruz’s debut feature Where The Night Stands Still, which premiered at the Perspectives section of Berlinale.

Our protagonist Lilia (Tess Magallanes) is a Filipino woman living in Italy. She lives alone in a large and largely unfurnished villa and her daily life consists of routines. When she wakes up, she says a prayer in which she mentions Signora Patrizia, then proceeds to the surrounding garden for a breath of fresh air and some serenity, after which she does some more chores. One would assume that she lives as a maid in someone else’s home, but later we learn she inherited the estate from the late Signora she worked for, who considered her a friend rather than the help.

That might be the reason why Lilia is being visited by her estranged siblings Manny (Benjamin Vasquez Barcellano Jr, the only seasoned film actor among the cast) and Rosa (Jenny Llanto Caringal). Two younger siblings who stayed back in their homeland might be on a mission to persuade Lilia to sell the house and come back to the homeland with money to invest, while the older sister might have different ideas. The communication between the three seems more formal than intimate and affectionate and there are certain resentments from the past…

Dela Cruz opts for the DIY approach and full control over the film by occupying multiple crew roles: along with writing and directing the movie, the filmmaker also shot and edited it and did the production design. She has a considerable sense of style. The film is shot in the “shades of gray”-type of black and white cinematography that allows play between light and shadow, while opting for the single-take scenes, usually in wider shots from a distance, signals artistic formal rigour. The austerity is further accented by the lack of any music, but Antonio Gianantonio's great sound design fills the film with garden and neighbourhood noises. Also, Dela Cruz at least has and listens to editing assistants, so the runtime is a pleasant 75 minutes.

On the downside, there are significant discrepancies in the acting styles of the three cast members. Barcellano Jr positions his Manny as a man simmering with some sort of anger, Magallanes is the under-acting mode as a modest woman grateful to the kind stranger more then she ever was to her family, while Caringal gives a lived-in performance as the youngest sister who seemingly aims to please. That constellation, along with the very title of the film, gives away the final plot twist which simply does not come as a surprise for a trained viewer, no matter how subtle and precise Dela Cruz's execution of it is.

In the end, Where Night Stands Still is a stylish, interesting feature debut that signals the filmmaker’s talent and sense of style. However, it somehow lacks in the substance department and would serve better as a short.