A Night Song

In a "wellness" obsessed society (eating well, sleeping well, producing well...), we rarely talk about "dying well". Death is a tenacious taboo; an embarrassing afterthought that we quickly try to forget, because it's too confrontational. We cringe at the mere mention of it, preferring to dodge it until the very end, even if it means that once we're there, we don't really know how to deal with it. It's almost like a defence mechanism against having to accept the ephemerality of life. Yet new practices surrounding assisted dying and the abandonment of religious traditions are forcing us to rethink and reinvent our rituals surrounding this inevitable moment of existence.

In this respect, Félix Lamarche's A Night Song is an immensely important work, for it forces us to look head-on at the dying process, without the possibility of obscuring the issue. Here, it's impossible to wallow in the comfort of distancing. The filmmaker offers us the ultimate privilege of witnessing the intimacy of the last moments of Noëlla's life: the preparations, the last meals, the glances, the laconic exchanges and the games of Solitaire. Because even when death is approaching, one must pass the time. In the chiaroscuro of her modest little apartment, the camera captures - over time - everything that constitutes the suspended time on the threshold between presence and absence. In this way, the film gives us all the space and time we need to reflect, remember, and anticipate. The images we are presented with inevitably intertwine with those of our own memories and experiences. Death is neither dramatized nor watered down. It is simply shown to us, without artifice, with all its surrounding elements: the pain and laughter of farewells, the awkwardness and hesitation of gestures, the wavering of empathetic silences. And suddenly, the emotion arises, multiplied tenfold by the extraordinary banality of something that concerns us all. The loss is real, and mourning can begin.

Jason Burnham
Tënk editorial manager