Night Call opens as a meditation on trust in an increasingly hostile world in the shadowy streets of Brussels, where protest chants echo off ancient stonework. The film shows one night when the city’s social connections are tested, as Black Lives Matter protests fill the streets, expressing a shared awareness.
Against this canvas of civil unrest, we follow Mady, a young Black locksmith whose occupation becomes an ironic metaphor – he who opens doors for others finds himself trapped in a labyrinth of deadly consequences.
A locksmith, a good man working to improve his future, takes a routine call from a woman named Claire, who carries a cruel, simple city. Even basic job responsibilities can become serious dangers in this dark world. Claire’s trickery, which involves stealing from a crime boss named Yannick, turns Mady’s night into a tense race against time in which his very survival depends on locating someone who has used his goodness against him.
As time passes, he becomes more immersed in Brussels’ criminal underworld, where trust is currency and mercy is a luxury few can afford. The cruel mathematics of survival replace his trade calculations.
Pawns in the Dark: The Moral Chess Game of Night Call
In Jonathan Feltre’s Mady, we watch the cruel transformation of virtue into vulnerability. As a student working part-time as a locksmith, he represents an ordinary person facing life’s challenges, but his character goes beyond just that common idea.
With his eyes carrying the weight of each moral compromise placed upon him, Feltre brings a delicate balance of ethical certainty and mounting desperation to the part. His character is in a fragile balance between survival and values, where the need to stay living weakens our sense of identity.
Mady’s journey through this nocturnal nightmare is a stark reminder that morality is often a luxury given only to those free from immediate threat. His first act of kindness—trusting Claire despite his misgivings—turns into a troubling reflection on what goodness means in an inherently evil world. The quiet terror moments in Feltre’s performance are particularly striking because they show how his character’s moral convictions slowly fade away and are replaced by the absolute necessity of survival.
The people around Mady are like planets with different levels of bad intentions. Natacha Krief’s character, Claire, is unpredictable, showing how lies can hide behind a facade of weakness. Her act raises a confusing question – is she a victim, a predator, or maybe a bit of both? The complicated nature of morals is also seen in Romain Duris’s character, Yannick, who is a crime boss. He is more than just a typical bad guy. Duris creates a character who follows his own strange rules, where being harsh is seen as just part of doing business.
The way these characters interact makes a complex situation of power struggles. Every encounter turns into a negotiation of moral positions in addition to the current situation. The changing dynamic between Mady and his captors is particularly gripping. There are moments of unexpected humanity that break through the violence, only quickly overshadowed by the night’s unavoidable descent. Theo, a character created by Jonas Bloquet, adds depth to this moral chess game by acting as a mirror of what Mady might turn into if he fully gives in to the dark forces of the night.
Nocturnal Canvas: The Visual Grammar of Urban Desperation
With the precision of a nightmare choreographer, Michiel Blanchart directs his first movie, realizing that the real drama is in the quiet moments between heartbeats, not in the din of action. His Brussels turns into a maze where shadows aren’t just the lack of light but are involved in the drama as it plays out. Moments of suffocating stillness interspersed with sudden bursts of kinetic desperation are typical of the director’s pacing style, which mirrors the unpredictable rhythm of survival.
Blanchart’s visual language changes as the night grows longer, and his camera becomes more involved in Mady’s journey into the city’s criminal underworld. The early scenes maintain a clinical distance, watching our protagonist’s routine work with the locksmith’s precision. As the story gets darker, the frame starts to shrink and twist, reflecting Mady’s feeling of being trapped. Each chase and fight is caught with a raw immediacy that speaks to the primal nature of survival, and action scenes emerge not as mere spectacles but as visual manifestations of moral crisis.
Through Sylvestre Vannoorenberghe’s view, Brussels becomes a modern Gothic scene, with neon lights creating an eerie glow on the wet streets. With tall buildings looming like uncaring gods over the human drama below, the cinematography treats the city’s design as both a safe place and a danger. Particularly striking is how the camera work mirrors the protagonist’s psychological state: steady and controlled in moments of professional focus, becoming increasingly untethered as his world falls apart.
From sterile apartment buildings to lively nightclubs, the visual story moves through the city’s various strata, with each place having its unique atmospheric weight. The constant Black Lives Matter protests are transformed into a visual Greek chorus, with their ebbing flames and swarming crowds reflecting Mady’s crisis. Blanchard and his team create a visual poem about feeling alone in the city, where each scene adds to a bigger picture of nighttime loneliness.
The Anatomy of Trust in a World of Shadows
In Night Call’s city setting, racial identity is not openly discussed but is still crucial to how every choice is viewed. The film’s setting during the Black Lives Matter protests is not just a backdrop; it highlights Mady’s deep loneliness. His failure to ask for help from the officials isn’t just a story issue; it shows serious societal problems that go beyond that night’s dangers.
The film carefully dissects the anatomy of trust, revealing how social power structures permeate even our most fundamental interactions with others. Mady’s professional courtesy and desire to assist Claire despite his misgivings create a meditation on how society’s most vulnerable often carry the heaviest burden of trust. His position as a Black professional in Brussels puts him at the crossroads of several power dynamics, where every choice carries the weight of immediate survival and wider social consequences.
The night’s progression reveals the basic survival structure below the surface of civilized society. The reasons behind each character’s actions become clearer, but their morals are unclear. Claire manipulates others, Yannick is violent, and Mady makes desperate adjustments. Each of these behaviors shows different sides of human nature when faced with stress. In a world where trust becomes a currency and moral compromise may be the only way forward, the film raises uncomfortable questions about the cost of survival.
When viewed through this lens, the city becomes more than just a backdrop; it becomes a metaphysical space where loneliness isn’t just physical but psychological. At night, the city shows how modern life can lead to new types of loneliness, where being among millions of people can make us feel even more alone.
Orchestrating Chaos: The Technical Symphony of Night Call
The technical setup of Night Call works like a finely made clock, with each part contributing to the film’s dive into city disorder. The sound design becomes a crucial character in and of itself, creating a rich tapestry of city atmosphere from the far-off roar of protest chants to the close pounding of heartbeats. Every step, every sound of a lock, and every heavy breath is noticed for how it affects our feelings and thoughts.
The editing rhythm creates a temporal grammar that feels urgent and oppressive, which matches the protagonist’s emotional journey. The scenes change in a way that reflects the unpredictability of survival, while the action parts are edited to focus on clear space rather than overwhelming the senses.
The film’s music is very well done. The artists know when to build up the tension and when to hold back, letting the sounds of the city at night take the spotlight. This technical orchestration hits its zenith in the film’s action scenes, where violence breaks out with a brutal efficiency that feels more documentary than staged spectacle.
Night’s Reflections: The Mirror of Modern Anxiety
Night Call shows how different genres can reveal important facts about modern life. Thanks to its relentless pace and masterful tension-building, the film goes beyond its thriller roots to become a meditation on trust in a time of broken social contracts. Jonathan Feltre’s character Mady’s moral decline serves as a mirror for our own choices in an increasingly hostile world.
The film’s visuals show the feeling of being alone in a city, highlighting how the bright city lights can brighten everything around us but can’t overcome our loneliness. With each chase and confrontation carrying the weight of philosophical study beneath its kinetic surface, Blanchart’s direction turns well-known action tropes into existential set pieces. When violence breaks out, it feels less like a show and more like a pause in a bigger conversation about survival and moral decision-making.
What stays with you after the excitement is how Night Call reflects the worries of our time. It shows that many of us feel like we’re racing through dark streets, chased by things we can’t quite understand. A study of how modern life has turned us all into locksmith figures, desperately trying to open doors while being cautious about what might be behind them, this film uses genre expectations as a starting point for something deeper.
The Review
Night Call
The mechanics of a chase thriller serve as a framework for deeper explorations of trust, survival, and moral compromise in Night Call, which appears as an effective fusion of genre thrills and existential inquiry. Although there are some uneven moments in the film's middle part, its technical quality, Feltre's strong lead acting, and Blanchart's confident direction make it a memorable experience that stays with you. Its debut announces an important new voice in European cinema while offering a dark mirror to our contemporary social anxieties.
PROS
- Masterful tension-building and atmospheric direction
- Jonathan Feltre's nuanced lead performance
- Sophisticated visual storytelling
- Effective integration of social themes
CONS
- Middle act pacing issues
- Some underexplored character motivations
