'Eat the Night' is a less than satisfying meal

French film mixes gangster drama with MMORPG obsession

“Eat the Night” is about a young woman who finds the shiny world of an online video game more enthralling than her real life.

We know how she feels.

The gamer’s immersion into virtual life is the most interesting part of Jonathan Vinel and Caroline Poggi’s movie, while the real-world scenes are too often a retread of derivative and pedestrian gangster-movie cliches.

Apolline (Lila Guaneau) is a teenage girl living in the gritty port city of Le Havre, France. Although she doesn’t see much of Le Havre – most of her time is spent in front of her computer playing a MMORPG called Darknoon. Her digital avatar, clad in armor of leather and lace, dispatches dozens of monsters at a time. And then, in a witty ode to “Fortnite,” does a little dance.

Darknoon is also the place where she spends the most time with her older brother, Pablo (Theo Cholbi). Pablo is often out in the streets dealing drugs, but when they log on together, Apolline and Pablo seem to connect in emotional ways they can’t in real life.

That bond is threatened both inside and outside the game. Apolline gets a message that the Darknoon servers will shut down in 60 days. And Pablo falls for another man, Night (Erwan Kepoa Fale). Both of these developments are where the really interesting parts of “Eat the Night” lie, as we wonder how they’ll test the bond between brother and sister.

Unfortunately, “Eat the Night” spends a lot of time with another subplot, in which Pablo gets into an escalating feud with a drug dealer (Mathieu Perotto) on whose turf Pablo has been encroaching. It’s standard “If they bring a knife, you bring a gun” crime-movie plotting that distracts from the emotions of the film.

Another issue is that the characters aren’t very well developed, especially Apolline, who seems to have no motivation beyond playing as much Darknoon as she can. Instead of peeling back the layers of her character, or pushing her into new territory, the film seems comfortable leaving her as a cipher, or a case study in video game obsession rather than a real person.

The cinematography of Raphael Vandenbussche is gorgeous, finding beauty in a shadowy movie that looks like it’s shot at night even during the daylight scenes. And, it has to be said, Darknoon looks completely convincing as a next-gen video game.

“Eat the Night” seems to be aiming to be a hybrid of “City of God” and “I Saw the TV Glow,” and while the ambition is admirable, it doesn’t quite have the processing power to keep running smoothly.

“Eat the Night” has its Madison premiere at 7 p.m. Thursday at UW Cinematheque, 4070 Vilas Hall. It will also be available to rent or buy on streaming sites like Prime Video starting on March 11.