52 Films by Women Vol 4. 3. NIGHT COMES ON (Director: Jordana Spiro)
Maybe we knew, maybe we thought it, but passing traffic
makes a sound like gently lapping waves. Listen to it a while and you could be
on a beach. In a comfortable bed, snuggled up under sheets - but you are on a
beach. No big old tsunami gonna land on your head. Not yet.
Actress turned director Jordana Spiro, known for recurring
roles in the American TV series My Boys,
Harry’s Law and The Mob Doctor,
makes a creditable feature debut in Night
Comes On, about a black teenager,
Angel Lamere (Dominique Fishback) who ended up in juvenile hall after been
found in possession of a gun. Newly released, she sets out on a mission. Her
mamma told her about those waves but now she’s dead, killed by the old man. Angel
wants vengeance – she’s an angel of vengeance, pardon my Abel Ferrara film
reference. She wants another gun, then to find her pa and stick it to him. He
can’t apologise for something like that.
But how do you find him when you gotta report to the parole
officer (James McDaniel) and get a job? Too many questions! The parole man
knows where her father’s at, but he won’t help. He won’t take attitude either.
Angel is three days short of her 18th birthday. She tries to get
hold of her friend, but girl won’t answer. She needs to keep her phone charged.
Why won’t a shopkeeper loan her a charger.
He loans the charger. Angel slumps in the corner, waiting
for 100%.
She goes to the father of a friend from juvie to ask for a
gun. ‘My daughter knows nothing about guns,’ the man tells her. Angel does, but
she is short of the asking price. Lip de licks. You’ve heard of the
arrangement, Man tells her. Shoot a ball through the basket and you can have
it. ‘Basket’s too small,’ Angel retorts. Man proves her wrong. He moves for
her, but then the phone rings. ‘Can you pick up some milk?’ he asks his other.
He wants to buy time and sends Angel out with a bottle of milk from the fridge.
Leaving his house, grinding her shoulders in a strident walk, Angel flings the
plastic bottle against the wall.
How do you survive with no place to go? You cradle inside a
building, let the warm air be your blanket. You pee yourself. Angel struggles
to clean herself up. She has a friend, she has a younger sister too, Abby
(Tatum Marilyn Hall), who has been texting Angel ever since she got out. Abby
is in a foster home - lotta kids. Angel wants to adopt Abby now she’s almost of
age. Can a boy be adopted by her too?
Abby still sees their father. He lives on the beach. Angel
is wild with anticipation. She makes the arrangement to get a gun. Services are
rendered, somewhere near to six am.
At the bus station, Angel has enough for two tickets. Well,
almost. The bus company cashier acknowledges her desperation. He gives her a
student discount. Angel buys a one way ticket for herself, a return ticket for
her sister.
What happens next enters the realm of spoilers. Let’s just
say there’s a bathroom incident, a stroke of luck, Angel’s look at a real home,
a hasty departure and a bowl of truth. Abby is left to sleep on a bus. Angel
has another priority.
Spiro worked on the screenplay with Angelica Nwandu, the
founder of the Shade Room, an Instagram purveyor of celebrity gossip. It is
lean, concise, measured and purposeful, a narrative Viking ship but without a
beard in sight. We understand that Angel hated being powerless, hated being
unable to prevent her father’s violence. There’s a confrontation, all right,
how could there not be? You’ve seen Kill
Bill. You know how these things play out.
I knew I was watching a director of quiet competence when
Angel is in conversation and stops listening to the man she is speaking to. In
a two shot, he’s suddenly out of focus and Angel is clear in the foreground. Night Comes On works as a ticking bomb
drama about a girl destroyed on the inside about to destroy herself on the
outside because she has nothing.
Night Comes On
doesn’t have the authenticity of Spiro reflecting her own background. But so -
even Martin Scorsese made a film about the Dalai Lama. It vibrates with
emotional truth. For those of us who wish to put our childhood traumas to bed,
we can relate. In my country kids acquire knives, not guns. They want settle in
their stomach, but there’s something else.
There is a weakness. The film is so focussed on vengeance
that it doesn’t have anything to say about misogynist, wife beating, no-one’s
looking, I-can-do-what-the-hell-I-want violence. John Lamere (John Jelks) never
got a life sentence on a technicality, but he’s still a killer, still lives his
life as a killer. What can stop men like him giving into to their tempers?
That’s a different film.
Reviewed at Stockholm
International Film Festival, Sture Screen Two, Saturday 17 November 2018,
11:00am screening
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