"Last night" made me naturally think of ""Closer", where we find four people, two men and two women, among whom the law of attraction made them fall apart, more than once, to the point of being no longer able to distinguish between love and attraction. Here we still find four people, one married couple (a significant point, indeed) who flirt with the idea of cheating, one night they are separated and this single night proves highly significant for both. The attractive female cast undoubtedly makes a difference in this movie, which seems to be made in the service of Keira Knightely's and Eva Mendes's power of attraction.
Nothing new, indeed, in the theme handled: how easy it is to give in to temptation, how narrow the edge is between "to betray or not to betray". So many movies dealt with the evergreen dilemma urging inside human souls, when love, passion, attraction, are so confusedly intertwined, mainly inside marital relationship. While in "Closer" the inner dilemma was more complicated, intense, almost lacerating in its crudity, involving both men and women, who betrayed each other, restlessly, as to become even impossible for the viewer to stand, in "Last night" the director works on a lower, more superficial level, we do not find such laceration inside the characters. The only interesting point moves around what cheating really means: the husband in the end yields sexually to a woman exerting just physical attraction on him, the wife refuses to yield, but gives a passionate kiss to the other, flirts much more, gives signs of being in love with him, we know she constantly thinks of him, writes to him, without having informed her husband about that unhealthy relation: is this not cheating, what is more or less heavy, or are the both "options" equally deplorable? Certainly, in the end, I came to the conclusion that if a single night has been enough to put so many doubts and crisis, the marriage was itself probably not so solidly based (and the couple Joanna-Michael does not convey any real communion inside their marriage, since from the beginning) but the director leaves any interpretation widely open, too open I would say.
No doubt the movie sounds intriguing, seductive, in the way it is centred on seduction (and the fashionable night atmosphere of New York plays its role), and we as viewers are seduced by these stories of powerful attraction, as we are gently led through it, we like being led through, but, in the end, very little remains: too harmless, rather superficial, in the way it deliberately stands away from too significant, but inescapable, moral and psychological complications of betrayal: see the French "Partir", or the Italian "Cosa voglio di più", and see how a movie may be committed and honest when trying to represent the real consequences of betraying one's mate's trust.
Nothing new, indeed, in the theme handled: how easy it is to give in to temptation, how narrow the edge is between "to betray or not to betray". So many movies dealt with the evergreen dilemma urging inside human souls, when love, passion, attraction, are so confusedly intertwined, mainly inside marital relationship. While in "Closer" the inner dilemma was more complicated, intense, almost lacerating in its crudity, involving both men and women, who betrayed each other, restlessly, as to become even impossible for the viewer to stand, in "Last night" the director works on a lower, more superficial level, we do not find such laceration inside the characters. The only interesting point moves around what cheating really means: the husband in the end yields sexually to a woman exerting just physical attraction on him, the wife refuses to yield, but gives a passionate kiss to the other, flirts much more, gives signs of being in love with him, we know she constantly thinks of him, writes to him, without having informed her husband about that unhealthy relation: is this not cheating, what is more or less heavy, or are the both "options" equally deplorable? Certainly, in the end, I came to the conclusion that if a single night has been enough to put so many doubts and crisis, the marriage was itself probably not so solidly based (and the couple Joanna-Michael does not convey any real communion inside their marriage, since from the beginning) but the director leaves any interpretation widely open, too open I would say.
No doubt the movie sounds intriguing, seductive, in the way it is centred on seduction (and the fashionable night atmosphere of New York plays its role), and we as viewers are seduced by these stories of powerful attraction, as we are gently led through it, we like being led through, but, in the end, very little remains: too harmless, rather superficial, in the way it deliberately stands away from too significant, but inescapable, moral and psychological complications of betrayal: see the French "Partir", or the Italian "Cosa voglio di più", and see how a movie may be committed and honest when trying to represent the real consequences of betraying one's mate's trust.