QUICK’N DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLINN
Where there is night, folly is sure to follow. Edge of the Night recognises that the darkness brings an animal out of people, whether that’s the nightclub howling or the mid-coitus moaning.
Estonian documentarist Vladimir Loginov creates a dream-like movie. This 92-minute film is mostly quiet and without music. Muffled noises and gently roaring vehicles are just about discernible. A gaggle of teenagers loiters and babblers. These scenes may have ended on the cutting room floor of another project, yet here they allow for the film to take a more holistic stance. In fact, these micro-interactions – normally discarded by memory – are the central pillar of this feature documentary.
The camera follows a lorry driver behind the wheel and also as he goes a a leisurely walk across the road. There’s a quiet intensity to the man in the vehicle, carrying out his trade with the finesse and respect it deserves. Elsewhere, 20-something-year-old goths listen to metal music. Teenagers drink and party. These people’s passion for leisure matches the driver’s commitment to his trade. What connects these disparate strands is that they all happen long after the children have gone to bed.
This non-narrative movie becomes increasingly sexy and wild. A masked man allows candle wax to run down his naked chest. His pleasure is entirely palpable. A protracted orgy makes for uncomfortable listening. A blond-haired woman at the emergency call centre becomes frustrated at the unusual requests. “Unfortunately, we don’t deal with that”, she sighs to a caller. “You will have to call your loved ones”, she concludes. Towards the end of the film comes a karaoke number. Friends gather to a tune they sang out loudly in their younger years. Meanwhile, nocturnal cleaners must clean up the mess left behind by diurnal citizens. In a moment that ripples of poetry, a worker sifts through the carelessly thrown-away rubbish.
This documentary embodies the insomnia and the wakefulness endured by the characters on the screen. This stream-of-consciousness approach helps to draw the viewer into the nightlife. When the dawn arrives, it brings colour to the sky. Before that, the only flurry of yellow stemmed from traffic lights beating on and off. The rat race people wake up, but that’s for another documentarist to discover. Edge of the Night delivers on the promise of the title.
Edge of the Night just premiered in the Doc@PÖFF International Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
