Café Noir

7/17/2015

An extended essay on unrequited love. Some might call it two essays on unrequited love as the 3+ hour film is cut distinctly into two halves, complete with a credit roll separating them. The first half is in color and focuses on a guy whose married lover ends their affair. The second half is in mostly black & white and focuses on a woman the guy met in the first half (who tells her story in one 14 minute still-camera take against a concrete background. And nails it!). The guy glues the two parts together. He’s bummed out in the first half, and then from serving as confidant to the differently-bummed-out woman in the second half he gets to feel better. He delivers good character arc and the juxtaposition in styles of bummed-outedness is told and executed well. But the story doesn’t matte