Once past the heavy-handed opening song whose primary lyrics are “self-fulfilling prophecy”, We Are the Night unfurls its themes of feminism, forced perspective and love’s resistance to expectation in a visually exciting style creating a film that proves to be more than just another emo-pandering vampire flick. If We Are the Night has anything to complain about, it’s the additions that came from the American side including the awful dubbing and a soundtrack that doesn’t know when to take a backseat.
Narrowly avoiding arrest after picking the pocket of a pimp under surveillance, Lena (Karoline Herfurth) goes out on the town and encounters Louise (Nina Hoss), the leader of a trio of vampires whose remaining two thirds consist of the no-nonsense Charlotte (Jennifer Ulrich) and the happy-go-lucky Nora (Anna Fischer).
The meeting in the club leads Louise to see a quality in Lena’s eyes that reminds her of a long lost love, and so she bites her; leaving Lena a vampire with the typical immortal qualities and an aversion to sunlight. With nothing waiting for her at home, Lena quickly adapts to her new life and gifts and finds herself the object of Louise’s affection. As she delves deeper and deeper into their world, Lena realizes she mirrors neither Louise’s feelings nor the other vampires’ blasé approach to killing, leading her to turn to Kommissar (officer) Tom Serner (Max Riemelt), the policeman who had pursued her for her pickpocketing at the film’s outset.
As a story about a quartet of female bloodsuckers would require, the film’s leading women are the strongest actors in the picture and deliver exceptional performances, better than what we’ve come to expect from the genre. Herfurth plays the reluctant romance well, and together with Hoss they develop a convincing enough relationship to warrant the film’s outcome. The standout performance here, just as it was in The Wave, comes from Ulrich whose icy demeanor makes some of the more vicious moments in the film work. Though you could argue that of all four vampires, she’s the one who plays most to type for the moody, emo vampire trend of today; if you follow that train of thought, it’s fair to say she does it better than her contemporaries playing similar roles. With the English dub, Riemelt’s performance is painful to watch, not because he did poorly, but because the voice acting is just too simple and doesn’t fit, ruining the character.
The film’s visual style works perfectly for its prominent scenes of hedonistic clubbing and violence. The more subdued palette director Dennis Gansel used in his last film, The Wave (aka Die Welle), gives way to one filled with rich colors and flashing lights streaming through hazy rooms. The look is well-polished to a Hollywood blockbuster level, there’s no denying that, but it works thanks to its setting in a world of neverending nightlife.
The audio, on the other hand, can be downright offensive. It’s easier to forgive the film’s soundtrack for being a bit overwhelming at times in its techno pulsation, after all there’s lots of clubbing going on, but even if you get past that, you have to deal with the distracting dubbing. Optimally, you’ll be able to see the film with subtitles instead of dubbing as the voice actors covering for Nora and Louise leave much to be desired. At least for Nora they got the bubbly tone right, but she sounds like a giddy 14-year-old, whereas for Louise there’s almost no emotion whatsoever despite her character being driven by her belief that she’ll find her lost love embodied in another; that’s a character whose voice should be passionate if ever there was one.
We Are the Night is not a deep masterpiece of thought, but it doesn't need to be to resuscitate the vampire genre to a better condition than it’s seen in the last five years. Gansel has an aesthetic that’s easy on the eyes, I just wish I could have seen it with the original voices and, though I’m not sure if it’s different, the original soundtrack.
"We Are the Night" opens May 27, 2011 and is not rated. Action, Horror, Thriller. Directed by Dennis Gansel. Written by Jan Berger, Dennis Gansel. Starring Jennifer Ulrich, Karoline Herfurth, Nina Hoss, Max Riemelt, Anna Fischer.
