SXSW
MOVIE REVIEW
Stay the Night (2022)
It’s a very specific category of romantic movie: A cute couple spend a night walking around a city, talking and having random encounters, instead of in bed together. The alpha and omega of this category is obviously “Before Sunrise,” which “Stay the Night” acknowledges in a wordless sequence toward the end, but other movies have worked different angles to keep the couples apart: In “Before We Go” one of them was married, and in “Medicine for Melancholy” the time together follows the one-night stand. In this new Canadian entrant for this category, as shown at this year’s SXSW Film Festival, writer-director Renuka Jeyapalan drops the cute couple in bed almost immediately, before immediately vaulting them right back out the door. It’s a bold choice but with this cast it works perfectly.