Stay the Night
SXSW Film Festival Narrative Spotlight Section
Reviewed for Shockya.com by Abe Friedtanzer
Director: Renuka Jeyapalan
Writer: Renuka Jeyapalan
Cast: Andrea Bang, Joe Scarpellino, Humberly González, Raymond Ablack
Screened at: SXSW Film Festival Online, LA, 3/13/22
Opens: March 12th, 2022
All it takes is one chance encounter to change a person’s life. There are so many possible distractions that can prevent two people from meeting, whether it’s a glance towards something in the distance that makes them miss locking eyes or a delayed method of transportation that means someone who should have been in a particular place arrives later than planned. But sometimes everything lines up just right and two people are in exactly the right space at the right time, which is slowly revealed to the be the case in the delightful Stay the Night.
Grace (Andrea Bang) and Carter (Joe Scarpellino) are radically different people in completely separate worlds. Grace works in HR and has just learned that she did not get a promotion she really wanted, and her decision to finally come out to a bar with her long-term couch-surfer best friend Joni (Humberly González) backfires when she abandons her to go back to her apartment with a date. Sexiled from her own home, Grace meets Carter, a hockey player who has just lost his prime gig and is waiting out the night in an all-expenses-paid hotel suite.
The fact that Grace doesn’t know who Carter is and doesn’t express enough interest in what he does to get to the truth helps puts them on a level playing field. But befriending a stranger and putting herself out there is also crucial to the skill set that Grace is told she lacks for the position she wanted. Her response, that she would learn and grow in the new role, is met with a reply that she needs to possess them before she transitions. This night, therefore, is her perfect opportunity to audition, albeit towards a different aim, with Carter able to offer her the type of suave guidance he’s been failing to do in his own professional life.
There is a remarkable simplicity and naturalness to this film, one which exists very much within a small world, introducing other characters but then honing in on Grace and Carter’s time spent together. Their first meeting is short and ends abruptly, yet they keep coming back to each other for a variety of reasons. It’s not Carter who invites Grace up to his suite but rather the other way around, and their interactions are extremely intimate in a way that mostly is not sexual. They are able to see something in each other that others believe they don’t have, which proves to be empowering and transformative.
Stay the Night represents a uniting of three talents, all of whom have limited credits and may not be widely known outside of their native Canada. Writer-director Renuka Jeyapalan, who has extensive experience helming TV episodes, makes her first solo film, reworking a concept that has been done before to a degree with a remarkable freshness and individuality. Bang and Scarpellino are both young talents given great material here, shutting out the rest of the world to hone in on their characters and how they relate to one another.
It’s nice to know that romance is not dead, and that films like this are still able to capture the magic of a chance meeting in a way that doesn’t feel manipulative and exaggerated. Instead, this is a connection that builds slowly and organically, defying what the film’s synopsis explains is a “time when dating apps and casual hook-ups are the new romance standard.” That Grace and Carter have no intention of bucking society’s expectations for them and fall unintentionally into a shared affinity makes it all the more pleasant and watchable.
94 minutes
Story – B+
Acting – A-
Technical – B+
Overall – B+