The Night Shift

92 minutes into Philippe Garrel's ELLE A PASSÉ TANT D’HEURES SOUS LES SUNLIGHTS … (1985) – one of his least seen and most mysterious films – the camera focuses closely on Marie (Mireille Perrier), from the back, as she starts her car and begins to pilot it through Paris traffic. The shot uses only available, natural light (a sign of Garrel's meager budget as well as his hard-edge aesthetic), so the image is mostly dark; additionally, a shallow focus lens blurs the background beyond the car windows. The scene begins in silence, but a rendition by Nico and the Blue Orchids of Lou Reed's classic “All Tomorrow’s Parties” unfussily glides in via a quick fade-up at the ten-second mark.

In its own, modest way, the scene is a kinetic carnival: beyond the play of light from outside and the jiggly camera motion created by the car, there are also sudden cuts, split-seconds of blackness, intrusions of other images caught (and not subsequently discarded) as the cinematographer's finger eased on and off the button, shot-end flares, and a glimpse of clapboard notation. Marie eventually stops the car, fidgets around for a while, and then – seen in the blurry background of the same set-up, decorated and smudged by raindrops on the window – she greets her guy, Gracq (Lou Castel). Over two minutes have already passed in this segment, and Nico has sung two verses.