Reflective Encounters

“Taking place over a single night out for a miserable film student, Four Pills at Night is an excellent case study for how clubbing is an intensely cinematic experience: the melodic beats, the pulsating lights, and the swaying of bodies. Characters are introduced in a glimpse and then disappear just as quickly. It’s a setting that crackles with anxiety, as the mixture of beats and drugs – which the main character Vali takes copious amounts of – heighten the senses.

As the night goes on, it becomes clear that Vali is besotted with the actor he’s going to be working with and that his friends don’t know about his sexuality. At first, he strikes an aloof figure on the dancefloor, swiftly avoiding a friendly-if-chatty woman, but the mounting effects of drugs and drama expose his sense of vulnerability, and more specifically his desperate need to be loved.

This is a technically impressive film, accurately depicting the chaos of a club while still telling a comprehensible story. But Four Pills is more than a mere exercise in technique, as its perceptive portrayal of emotional fragility on a night out bears the mark of true artistry.”

— Cathy Brennan