Chattanooga Film Festival Coverage
Good Night review
Good Night is a pretty good time.
Festival reviews will not contain spoilers.
Good Night
Directed by Matias Szulanski
Written by Victoria Freidzon and Matias Szulanski
Starring Rebeca Rossato
Good Night Review
Good Night takes one idea and runs with it as far as it can. It’s similar in style and execution to that episode of Ted Lasso where Coach Beard has a strange night in town alone. Actually…it’s pretty much exactly like that. I didn’t realize how similar they were until I started writing this paragraph…and now I can’t unsee it. In that episode, Beard After Hours, Beard has a series of bizarre misadventures while on his own after a tough loss. It’s notable for breaking the regular format of the show…focusing on just one character and their increasingly strange night. There’s no second idea or subplot.
Buenas Noches, or Good Night as it’s called here, focuses on one character and their increasingly strange night. There’s no second idea of subplot. It’s a concept that works the more you commit to it. Leave your ideas of character arcs and intertwining plots at the door…Good Night isn’t doing any of that. It’s fully committed to its sole concept. There’s no room for conventional movie ideas to disrupt that idea.
Laura (Rebeca Rossato) is in Argentina to visit her aunt. The airline has lost her luggage. She watches her phone and wallet drive away in the taxi she took…and finds out that her aunt is out of town. With no money and nowhere to go…Laura must kill time until her aunt returns the next morning.
When I said that Good Night only has one idea…what I really mean is that it has one driving force: Laura’s night out. The story has plenty of ideas about what to do with her alone in a strange place with nowhere to go and no finances at her disposal. Her adventure begins with some lighthearted grifting. Money is easy enough to come by when you’re a pretty girl. Not a lot of money…but enough to pay for dinner and remove hunger pains.
Laura’s troubles begin when she falls in with a group of girls on their way to a house party. They scam a taxi ride to a guy’s apartment and find…there’s no party in a traditional sense. What there is, however, is a girl in a bathtub and a pair of kidneys on ice. The situation is confirmed when they answer a phone call inquiring about purchasing six of them. Where most people would run…these ladies decide to try and complete the deal themselves. They only have two of the six kidneys…but that’s nothing that a trip to the supermarket’s meat department can’t solve. They don’t need working kidneys…just something that looks good enough to pass off during a financial transaction.
At this point, Good Night is making no mistake about its intentions. This isn’t going to be a story about passing time. It’s a story about making bad decisions. Keeping with that theme…Laura takes the money and runs. Now she’s being chased by the girls she ran out on, the buyers who are about to realize they’ve been conned, and the people who were supposed to deliver the goods in the first place. That’s one way to stay awake.
As the night goes on Laura becomes more and more tired. From a party bus to a club to not one, not two, but three failed attempts to find a place to sleep for the night…Laura’s night never slows down. Especially when those search parties begin to catch up with her.
Good Night ultimately relies on a lot of convenient coincidences. A couple of them are a big ask…but, in a strange way, it adds to the story’s odd charm. Things spiral far out of Laura’s control. Guns and kidneys come into play. The question of what Laura is going to do to kill time until morning quickly becomes the question of whether or not she can survive that long.
Good Night is a fun movie that makes the most out of its single concept. Things don’t break Laura’s way from the get-go…and her own choices begin to make matter much worse. Performances are strong and the movie retains a brisk energy throughout. You’ll need to accept some pretty unbelievable coincidences for the story to stay on track…but if you can meet it at its intention…it only adds to the fun.
Scare Value
Good Night is an interesting one. Laura is simply looking for a place to stay for the night…and she ends up in an unpredictable and never-ending mess. It throws a lot of events that rely on coincidence at its main character…but it becomes a part of the charm by the end of the story. There’s no second point to Good Night‘s story. It’s simply a ride through a night full of danger with a girl who would much rather be sleeping.
