‘For Night Will Come’: Venice Review

Dir: Céline Rouzet. France, Belgium. 2023. 104mins

A new family moves into a close-knit community in mountainous rural France, hoping, they say, for that desirable combination of proximity to nature and a welcoming neighbourhood. But, in fact, the main concern for the Féral family is rather more specific: they need a place where teenager Philémon (Mathias Legoût-Hammond) can thrive without outsiders realising that he is a little different from the other kids. Philémon is chiselled and pale, poetically handsome. He prefers the shadows and avoids the sun. And he drinks human blood, provided for him, one way or another, by his mother Laurence (Elodie Bouchez). This handsome debut feature from Céline Rouzet drains the horror from the vampire genre, instead using it as an allegory for otherness, for society’s rejection of people who do not quite fit into the social norms.

Drains the horror from the vampire genre, instead using it an an allegory for otherness

Rouzet cut her teeth as a documentarian with a film about Papua New Guinea titled A Distant Thud In The Jungle. For her first fiction feature, she turns her lens closer to home: the film is directly inspired by her own family and the experience of growing up in small-town France with an older brother who was ’born different’. It’s not an entirely original concept – everything from the Twilight series to Julia Ducournau’s Raw has used unnatural appetites to explore the problem of fitting into a world that views you as a monster. But Rouzet’s picture is a sensitively handled drama that taps into teen yearning and doomed romance in a way that could find favour with a YA audience and beyond.

The members of the Féral family are cautiously optimistic about their new home, although, as dad Georges (Jean-Charles Clichet) stresses, it doesn’t pay to get too comfortable anywhere. “Habit makes us mess up.” Having previously kept Philémon fed using her own veins, Laurence’s job as a nurse at the blood bank is a perfect cover – she secretly steals rejected bags of blood for her son to consume. And at a neighbourhood barbecue held in the family’s honour, the well-rehearsed cover story holds firm. But Philémon is increasingly discontented with a life spent lurking behind curtains. He’s drawn to the coquettish Camila (Céleste Brunnquell), accepting her invitation to hang out with her gang of friends at the local river where he gazes from the shade, wistful and pallid, as the other teenagers frolic in the sun.

If Camile already suspected that there was something a little out of the ordinary about the new boy in town, she is left in no doubt after his unsettling reaction when she cuts her hand. But, unlike her friends, Camile is not repulsed by him. Philémon dares to hope that she might accept and love him for who he is but, at the same time, his urges grow ever more forceful, driving him further from the realm of the acceptable.

There’s something rather gothic about this modern fairytale about an achingly lonely boy trapped in a prison of his difference. In some ways – the trajectory of a fleeting, tempting taste of acceptance followed by mob condemnation – the film bears thematic similarities to Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands. It is a picture that might have benefited from a bolder, more full-blooded directorial approach, rather than the matter-of-fact realism that Rouzet employs. Still, Philémon’s despair, and the pain felt by the parents and sister who love him despite it all, are evoked with a stinging credibility.