Skip to content

Shuswap Film Society: The Passengers of the Night stops at Salmar

Cinemaphile by Joanne Sargent
30823109_web1_221028-SAA-C-Cinemaphile-passengers-_1
French film The Passengers of the Night runs at the Salmar Classic on Saturday, Oct. 29. (Contributed)

Our next Shuswap Film Society movie, set in Paris over several years during the 1980s, is a portrait of a French family suffering the emotional fallout of divorce.

Elizabeth, the mother of two teenage kids, has been left by her husband, without financial support, and desperately needs work.

A mild insomniac, Elizabeth often listens to, and on a whim applies for a job on, a late-night radio talk show, The Passengers of the Night, that gives the movie its title.

The no-nonsense broadcaster who hosts the show gives Elizabeth a chance and hires her to work the phones to screen callers. Tallulah, a teenage runaway, is a guest on the show one evening and when Elizabeth sees that Tallulah has no place to go, she invites her to crash at her family’s apartment. Tallulah has problems, and an off-and-on drug habit that causes her to drift in and out of the family’s life, but her free spirit has a lasting impact on the bruised family.

Read more: Quiz: How well do you know your classic Halloween horror movies?

Read more: Fall Preview: Is it, maybe, back to normal again at the movies?

The film focuses on Elizabeth and her son Matthias as they rise to their respective life challenges and attempt to tread a new path in life.

Elizabeth is facing an empty nest and understands the need to let her children, and herself, take risks. We watch as Matthias falls hard for Tallulah and as the shy Elizabeth embarks on her own new relationship with a man she meets at her second job at the library. Elizabeth quietly and gracefully comes to terms with her past, moves forward and makes a life for herself.

The Passengers of the Night is a gently uplifting saga of self-invention and healing over time – we see subtle changes in the way the characters behave as the years go by.

It’s about life’s transitions and the way most of us in our ordinary lives quietly grow through them one day at a time, step by sometimes painful step.

The Passengers of the Night is subtitled and plays on Saturday, 5 p.mn., at the Salmar Classic.



newsroom@saobserver.net
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter