When Night Is Falling

Camille teaches literature at a conservative Christian university and is about to be engaged to Martin, a colleague there. When her dog dies she falls apart in a laundromat, and that is where she meets Petra, a tightrope walker with a travelling circus. Their bags get mixed up. When Camille goes to return the bag she cannot go back. The film frames the choice as a dilemma but does not weigh the sides equally: on one hand a safe, respectable, frozen life, on the other snow, carnival and something without a name. As a love story set in midwinter the imagery follows, with cold and heat set constantly against each other. Patricia Rozema wrote and directed. Pascale Bussieres plays Camille and Rachael Crawford plays Petra. The circus sections are where the film is freest, and Rozema abandons narrative there for something purely visual. Who it is for: anyone who likes nineties independent queer cinema and love stories told as fable. Who it is not for: anyone looking for realism. The circus is heavily symbolic, Martin stays one-dimensional, and the resolution bends the film's own rules.