Last Night

A film by Don McKellar (Canada, 1998),

with Don McKellar, Sandra Oh, Callum Keith Rennie, Sarah Polley, Geneviève Bujold, David Cronenberg.

The end of the world is near. Actually, tonight is going to be the last night. All are very busy in Toronto on that occasion. What would YOU like to do indeed before you die if all you have left is one single day?...

The concept of this story follows the guidelines formulated by producers Carole Scotta and Caroline Benjo (Haut et Court) for their series "2000, seen by..." (coproduced with Arte), a collection of ten films based on the concept of the end of the world and viewed by ten directors of different nationalities (Tsai Ming Liang, Don McKellar, Hal Hartley, Alain Berliner among others). It was first supposed to be a TV series but a number of authors got so enthusiastic by the subject they eventually turned their initial project into a feature-length film. Tsai Ming Liang's Hole even made it to Cannes in the 1998 Official Selection while Last Night got selected by the Director's Fortnight. Speaking of Last Night, actor Don McKellar's first film, its approach of the end of the world is undoubtedly entertaining owing to an omnipresent deadpan humor opposing the tragic aspect of the situation. The film eventually features most likeable characters and suggests an optimistic vision of year 2000... All this is very nice, but a bit disappointing too: the screenplay turns somewhat poor, considering the initial richness of the concept, which finally doesn't really stand out anymore as much as it could have. More was definitely expected. In Last Night, McKellar seems to contend himself with a few characters that are fairly homogeneous after all. Although they have different wishes, they all seem to come from the very same social background. As a result, we can only witness a biased vision of the end of the world. Still, the film remains entertaining and it's at least to its credit that it's most likely to raise a tricky question: what would we do if we had one day left to live?

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