No Night Is Too Long *** (2002, Lee Williams, Marc Warren) – Classic Movie Review 12,983

Ernst Edler von Schuch conducting Der Rosenkavalier (1912), by German painter Robert Sterl.

Lee Williams and Marc Warren star as star-crossed lovers in the ambitious and compelling 2002 psychological thriller film No Night Is Too Long, based on the novel by Ruth Rendell.

Director Tom Shankland’s ambitious and compelling 2002 BBC and Alliance Atlantis UK/ Canada co-production psychological thriller film No Night Is Too Long is based on the 1994 novel by Ruth Rendell (writing as Barbara Vine), with a screenplay by Kevin Elyot.

It is kind of playful and sexy, and twists and turns entertainingly, but gets increasingly far fetched and unbelievable as the over-heated plot kicks in. But then it’s only a movie, isn’t it? It’s not a documentary, right? Do thrillers have to be convincing? Maybe not. Just enjoyable, and this one is. Just convincing enough to persuade you to keep being involved, and this one does.

The psychology is reliably good though, totally persuasive, with the main character desperately seeking to attract love then dramatically pushing away whoever he finds it from, as a result of some family damage: the death of his father and the total withdrawal of his mother. It’s a strong point that Rendell’s story plays fair with this idea right up to its bitter end.

No Night Is Too Long (2002, Lee Williams).

Lee Williams plays bright creative writing student Tim Cornish English at Warwick University, who spots palaeontology lecturer Dr Ivo Steadman (Marc Warren) staring at him and engineers meetings with him. Ivo appears at Tim’s house at New Year and a passionate relationship between the two follows. It is fair to say that it doesn’t go well, otherwise this would be a romantic drama, a gay love story, rather than the dark psychological thriller it is. Yes, but how dark?  Is Tim and Ivo going to be a fatal attraction?

Both men (Lee Williams, Marc Warren) are excellent though, in really tricky, quite showy roles, with the androgynous Williams turning from cute to psycho effectively and Warren turning from menacing to violent convincingly. They are very well cast. Williams was nominated for a Gemini award (Canadian equivalent of an Oscar) for best Lead Actor.

Even though it is made for TV, it is fairly filmic, sometimes very filmic, thanks to imaginative Canadian cinematographer Paul Sarossy, shooting in rather grainy Super 16 with much intense Steadicam work, and the startling location shooting in British Columbia, Canada (standing in for Alaska where much of the action takes place).

All the characters are absolutely appalling, which makes sympathy tricky. The ‘hero’ is so awful that his only redeeming feature is how pretty he is, which is the sole reason everyone is interested in him. He is a nasty piece of work, though Rendell provides all the reasons and excuses for this. The unpleasantness of the characters arguably brings a slight whiff of homophobia to the film, though Tim is bisexual. There is a surprising amount of sex and nudity, which is entirely unnecessary, but nice.

It feels a bit long at two hours, but is manages to motor along and be engrossing, and it gets a bit involvingly epic with the cruise ship and island filming,

The title comes from a line in Richard Strauss’s opera Der Rosenkavalier: ‘Without me, every day is a misery; With me, with me no night is too long.’ The film mirrors some of the opera’s weighty themes: including infidelity, rejection, secrets, aging, sexual predation and selflessness in love.

The recording of it is conducted by Georg Solti. The soundtrack is composed by Chris Dedrick.

The cast are Lee Williams as Tim Cornish, Marc Warren as Dr Ivo Steadman, Mikela J Mikael as Isabel, Salvatore Antonio [Salvatore Migliore] as Thierry Massin, Beverley Breuer as Connie Dorral, Rob Bruner as Nathan Hayward, Denis Corbett as Passenger #2, Philip Granger as Fergus Mc Kenzie, Mark Hildreth as James Gilman, and Liam McGuigan as Young Tim Cornish.

The works of British playwright, screenwriter and actor Kevin Elyot (18 July 1951 – 7 June 2014) include the play My Night with Reg (1994) and its film adaptation, the film Clapham Junction (2007) and TV episodes of Agatha Christie’s Poirot and Agatha Christie’s Marple, plus a TV adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s autobiography Christopher and His Kind.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 12,983

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