Movies that turn inward to savor the pleasures of other movies and the power of cinema, risk
evoking an introspective state of reverie better suited to a novel than the big screen. But the
Italian romantic comedy After Midnight, with its both charming and cutting humor, reveals an
immense gift for storytelling that blends sentimental quirkiness with wry satire.
Steeped in the heady nostalgia of classic movies, while bringing to life the magic of cinematic-like
moments hidden in everyday life, Davide Ferrario's After Midnight succeeds where Bertolucci's
The Dreamers earlier this year did not. The Dreamers failed to overcome a constrained
disjointedness, that never quite effected the fusion of its similar movie-smitten triangle of
outwardly impulsive young lovers with the fertile recesses of their charged fantasy lives.
Amanda (Francesca Inaudi) is a tomboyish and peeved minimum wage burger flipper, at a fast
food eatery in Turin specializing in fairly awful double fried specials. Even worse, Amanda is
subjected to the heartless tyranny of a boss who won't let her catch the last bus home just before
closing at midnight, even though all the customers are long gone.
Amanda's irresponsible boyfriend Angel (Fabio Troiano) isn't much help either. He's a
professional car thief who is usually out cruising around Turin for his next caper whenever she
really needs him around. Fed up with the prison-like atmosphere at work one night, Amanda
flings the hot burger cooking grease at the boss's crotch, and makes a run for it.
With the cops in pursuit, Amanda ducks into Turin's famed palatial Mole Antonelliana Museum of
Cinema, where the night watchman Martino (Giorgio Pasotti) helps hide her. The shy and
reclusive Martino in fact has been regularly showing up at her job to order the double fried
burgers. But Martino, unknown to Amanda, is obsessed with her and, as he later painfully
confesses, would rather be eating apples.
Martino, who is so immersed in silent movie dreamscapes that he can barely distinguish himself
at this point from Buster Keaton, likewise draws Amanda into the magical world of the movie
museum, where art doesn't so much imitate, as perfect and replace life. Amanda is now torn
between two lovers, each appealing in their own wacky ways, and her difficult choice becomes
more than just a little tinged with the irresistible enchantment of movies.
Part Truffaut's Jules And Jim and part Cinderella for this fast food drudge turned inner city
goddess, After Midnight may very well be about the deepening impact of movie fantasy on
people, as options in life diminish under weakening economic conditions wherever that may be.
At the same time, the film delicately casts its spell somewhere between grasping at movies to
reimagine a life, and life surprising itself by playing out as a movie.
In a seemingly not unrelated footnote to a film in which the historic Mole movie museum sets the
captivating stage for the story, After Midnight is the first movie to play at NY's just reopened New
Metro Twin Theater. This majestic art deco preserved landmark was recently saved from being
torn down to make way for a chain supermarket.

Prairie Miller