The Passengers of the Night

2022

111 mins

Directed by Mikhaël Hers
90%
62%
Drama

Charlotte Gainsbourg (Melancholia) leads this drama as a mother in 1981 Paris mourning the end of her marriage. Picking up... More

Charlotte Gainsbourg (Melancholia) leads this drama as a mother in 1981 Paris mourning the end of her marriage. Picking up a job on a night-time radio show, she decides to take a youngster under her wing.

The winds of change are blowing on election night and the French storm the streets, elated. But Élisabeth (Gainsbourg) struggles to share the general mood of optimism. Her marriage is coming to an end and she will now have to support her family. She is distraught, and her father and teenage children are worried that her tears simply will not dry.

But what if listening to her emotions could help her to start filling the blank page of her future? What if she were to write a letter on a whim to the host of her favourite radio programme? Or invite a homeless girl into her house? What would happen if she were to make the kind of gestures that actually change lives?

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Where to watch The Passengers of the Night

The Passengers of the Night is available to stream in... More New Zealand now on Google TV and Apple TV Store and AroVision.

The Passengers of the Night | Ratings & Reviews

90_%31 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes® rating
62_%8 reviews
Audience score rating

"It covers a surprising amount of narrative ground and there is always something engaging and tender to it."

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The Guardian

"An airy, low-key drama that doesn’t suffer for its lack of narrative tension, The Passengers of the Night further proves the old adage about the journey mattering more the destination."

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Variety

"In its unassuming, intuitive way, the film is rather beguiling, if a little gauzy and elusive at times."

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Screen Daily

"The film spans several years in her life and that of her family, covering moments both important and relatively inconsequential. It’s a credit to Hers’ contemplative, never intrusive observational style that by the end of the two-hour running time we know them intimately."

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Hollywood Reporter

"The film’s greatest achievement is the measured and elegant gaze on a woman in the prime of life, often referred to as middle age, whose desires (both sexual and professional) are neither diminished nor pathologized."

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