Stay The Night

She is a dissatisfied HR advisor. He is a professional hockey player placed on waivers. She hasn’t got much luck when it comes to her relationships and learns her colleagues find her just a little standoffish. He finds himself having to make a decision that may very well shake up his world. In rehashing the stranger-connects-with-a-stranger premise that cinema has such a soft spot for, writer-director Renuka Jeyapalan develops a vision that balances a lack of a distinctive visual voice with committed character work.

Grace (Andrea Bang) and Carter (Joe Scarpellino) meet outside of a bar in Toronto. They share a cab, they walk, they talk, they confess their hopes and fears to one another. The film puts grounded exchanges at its forefront; this emphasis on intimate expression is a double-edged sword, though, because while it enhances the believability of the pair’s bond, it puts to the test their capacity to constantly engage the viewer. To give Jeyapalan the credit, these exchanges characterise her as a patient filmmaker - the story may not unfold in real-time, but individual scenes provide characters with the space necessary to project their hesitation and vulnerability.

What feels like a wasted opportunity is the film’s unremarkable stylistic. Arguably the greatest among the films which followed similar premises, Linklater’s Before Sunrise used locations, as distinctive as they were eye-catching, as integral storytelling backdrops and long takes as well as natural lighting as a means to capture the sensuality and earnestness of the affection forming in front of the viewer's eyes. Stay The Night’s interiors, on the other hand, seem, with some exceptions, to act as an excuse to allow the characters to sit down for a few minutes.

An ice rink is among the few more memorable settings. However, that's not by the virtue of the lighting, camera work, or framing that accompany it as, even if there is something of a colour code to the venues Grace and Carter pay a visit to, throughout the film, neither of these elements appears particularly prone to imprinting itself on one’s memory for long. As a consequence, it largely rests on the actors’ shoulders to inhabit and enliven the screen space. Admittedly, more often than not, they succeed.

Stay The Night does not attempt to reinvent the wheel. It’s a simple tale told, for better or worse, with little visual embellishment. It doesn’t have the nuance or the charm of the best films that took on like foundational ideas, yet Renuka Jeyapalan demonstrates that she is a confident character creator and a collected storyteller.