Over greater than half a century available on the market, video video games have achieved true cultural ubiquity — arguably greater than narrative filmmaking within the present day. How improper it’s, then, that films have largely continued to point out gaming in a shallow, nonliteral method, portrayed as inconsiderate pleasure buzzers, somewhat than indicating how a title handles or instructions consideration. Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel don’t take such shortcuts with their thriller “Eat the Night time.” Although the narrative backbone is a turf warfare between small-time drug sellers, the Cannes-launched French characteristic searches for its large feelings within the digital realm, with lengthy in-game sequences that comply with a youngster compelled to flee the awful world round her.

On the cusp of maturity, the pale Apolline (Lila Gueneau) spends her days roaming the lands of “Darknoon,” a “World of Warcraft”-like large multiplayer on-line sandbox. Together with her avatar’s outsized sword and comically skimpy battle armor, Apolline takes on one quest after one other, hardly ever leaving the folds of her bed room. Her homosexual older brother Pablo (Théo Cholbi) generally logs in to play too. When he goes to work, he hops on his too-flashy bike to deal MDMA candies for money. In the future, Pablo recruits a younger Black man named Night time (Erwan Kepoa Falé) as a enterprise associate and, quickly after, the pair start a tryst.

This early act of “Eat the Night time” can appear plainly beauty. Falé and Cholbi discover refined notes to the pair’s interaction, however the actors don’t share the fiery chemistry to launch a passionate, doomed romance; their first kiss is a little bit of a rushed shock. In the meantime, Apolline and Pablo’s dwelling life isn’t fleshed out past a glum impression. (Their grump father, hooked as much as an oxygen tank in one other room, is generally a structuring absence.) However interspersed by all of it is the ticking clock of “Darknoon,” which is planning to close down its servers after 20 years on-line. The world is about to finish for Apolline, and that dread shades Pablo and Night time’s personal lives too.

It isn’t a mistake that the happenings inside “Darknoon” are largely extra involving than the legal eye-for-an-eye battle that engulfs Pablo and Night time. There’s function to the distinction, however that doesn’t cowl up some lulls. The movie renews its dramatic confidence as “Darknoon” grows extra central to the story, with Night time becoming a member of the server in its last days to get nearer to (however inadvertently catfish) an unknowing Apolline.

In a putting alternative that bravely dangers the uncanny valley, “Eat the Night time” will often swap the in-game avatars’ faces for extra expressive, sensible options that resemble the actors’ personal. It’s a stylistic danger effectively well worth the reward. The uneasy marriage of the parallel worlds forges a novel aesthetic floor: one the place muffled feelings will be totally clarified, not solely to viewers however to the characters themselves.

Poggi and Vinel sharply make use of the stylings and stalled physics of video video games to loads extra melodramatic ends. A gory homicide and snappy respawn function each a cathartic expression of rage and an off-beat joke. And a late scene, with avatars screaming and looking for each other amongst different gamers, brings grandeur to this story’s small-scale plight. In any case, would Apolline ever depart the home to be in a crowd within the first place? Extra to the purpose, would an indie manufacturing like “Eat the Night time” have the ability to afford tons of of extras?

Even because the core narrative escalates to hardened violence, Poggi and Vinel are cautious to take care of a sure delicacy (a fluttering rating by digital musician Ssaliva is a guiding power right here). Their movie is a cry for youngsters left to their very own units — actually within the case of Apolline’s hulking Alienware gaming laptop computer. As Apolline places it, “Darknoon” doesn’t actually have an goal aside from to “enhance your self,” so what turns into of somebody when all their self-improvement is wiped away? Even by a skinny plot, “Eat the Night time” earns its noir stripes by staring into that abyss.