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Gay Sex, Red Pills, and Video Games Are the Sweet Stuff of 'Eat the Night'

By Jason Adams | Film | January 12, 2025 |

EAT THE NIGHT.jpeg
Image sources (in order of posting): Altered Innocence,

It’s always nice to see some unconventional and complicated queer representation pop up in entertainment, and you get a good dollop of that in the flawed but fascinating French thriller Eat the Night, out in theaters this weekend. Winding a gay love story noose-like around a family drama and a crime thriller plus a rumination on modern gaming culture to boot, some would say that Eat the Night bites off more than it could possibly chew. And those people would be correct. But there are morsels of beauty and wisdom and real modern-living peculiarity that are here to be savored, even if they do occasionally dribble down its chin.

Pablo (Théo Cholbi) is a recklessly impulsive drug dealer who can’t stop attacking his rival dealer’s gang, even though he’s seriously outmatched given the fact that he appears to be a gang of one. Save his younger sister Apolline (Lila Gueneau), who he abandons in their apartment by herself for long stretches of time, Pablo seems to operate entirely on his own—brewing the pills he sells himself in a rundown house out in the woods, Pablo’s cut out all of the middlemen. But no worries—he carries enough chips on his shoulder for everybody.

Then one night during one such violent outburst as he finds his ass getting kicked yet again, a hero appears—a beautiful kind soul named Night (Erwan Kepoa Falé) breaks the bashing up, and the two ride off together on Pablo’s motorcycle before things can escalate out of hand. (A meet-cute over a gay-bashing—everybody say “Awwww.”) Hitting it off immediately it’s not too long before Pablo’s inviting Night into both his business and his bed; thankfully Cholbi and Falé have ace chemistry too, so their intimate scenes are some real scorchers—one wonders if the actors, who both had small roles in Ira Sachs’ super-sexy Passages, picked up some lessons from watching Ben Whishaw and Franz Rogowski go at it.

Actually, much like the irrepressible prick that Rogowski played in Passages, Cholbi’s Pablo is also a real pain in the ass, and not just in the fun way. Co-directors Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel show admirable restraint in diagnosing his destructive streaks—he’s sweet with Night and with Apolline, but his personality (like the film) is overly compartmentalized, so you never know when he might go off and do something stupidly rash. And Pablo’s sweetness itself is laced through with its own sort of poison, given the fact that his idea of romance is to drag the seemingly well-adjusted Night into a life of crime without showing a second’s reservation.

Meanwhile Pablo’s relationship with sister Apolline is fraught in its own ways—when the film begins they’re entirely on their own, spending almost every waking moment (when he’s not out dealing drugs) immersed inside of a MMORPG called Darknoon (the game was created by the film’s co-directors) that’s very World of Warcraft adjacent. Indeed the film’s inciting incident is the announcement that Darknoon will be shutting down its servers within a couple of months— Apolline is crushed, explaining in voice-over that all of her best memories with her brother happened inside that virtual world. In fact all of her memories, period, seem to be from inside Darknoon—outside the game she doesn’t seem to have friends, or a life; not one we see anyway.

The film isn’t judgemental toward her character for this, though. Similar to I Saw the TV Glow last year, Eat the Night approaches relationships formed virtually, within a fictive world, with true generosity. When we see Apolline and Pablo’s avatars interacting inside the game they communicate in ways they simply cannot in real life, and when it comes time for Apolline to get to know Night, it happens through the game as well. And it’s really lovely. In fact, these are always the best scenes in the film, and like any good gaming addict, we keep wishing we’d be back there, inside of those immersive and strange safe spaces where these characters can live large and show off in the right ways.

Unfortunately, every Oz needs its dreary Kansas counterpoint, and this movie is much less compelling when it gets lost among its been-there played-that crime syndicate baloney that eats up too much of this Night. You can almost see over its pixelated horizon a better truer film where the triangle between Pablo and Apolline and Night, and the ways it fractures and reassembles in the virtual world, is the entire focus. But as it is, Pablo’s volatility never feels properly explored, since it’s given the exit hatch of rote gang-war theatrics. Instead of finding out why he’s so self-destructive, or why Night is so easily hoovered up into that, we’re just treated to interminable chases. The movie, aping stereotypes of masculinity, keeps popping punches in place of psychology.

Yet Eat the Night, in its overeager abundant weirdness, remains a fairly memorable little thing even as it sometimes trips over itself. The relationships between Pablo and Night and Pablo and Appoline and Appoline and Night feel particular, precise, totally unique. These are three gorgeous weirdos, and I just enjoyed spending my time with them. Yes, even the often insufferable Pablo, who to his credit lives the “Be Gay Do Crime” ethos to its fullest gayest extent. It’s a brave new world that this trio is exploring, and maybe the next movie from directors Poggi and Vinel can level it up to match them.