Four Nights of a Dreamer

Adapted from Dostoevsky's story of a couple's chance encounter and the advance of their parallel obsessions over four successive nights. The hallucinatory light and colour of Paris at night act as both mirror and landscape for their fragile relationship. Shot through with a mystical, almost frosty compassion, the film is rescued from occasional moments of pretension by the gentle eroticism and absolute conviction with which it is made. The Dostoevsky story, White Nights, was filmed under that title by Luchino Visconti in 1957.