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After Dark

After Dark

Released Oct 17th, 2024
Running Time 119 Min.
Director Liselle Bailey
Company Dorcel
Distribution Company Pulse Distribution
Cast David Perry, Ariana Cortez, Luke Hardy, Max Deeds, Sam Bourne, Selva Lapiedra, Miss Alice Wild, Anita Rover, Alice Drake
Critical Rating AAAA
Genres Anthology, Marquee, International

Rating

Synopsis

Anita suffers from insomnia. To combat it, she goes out for walks in the night and imagines the lives of the strangers she meets.

Reviews

As the digital clock flips to midnight, wide-awake insomniac Anita Rover muses in voiceover, "I have always thought sleep to be redundant," as her paramour femme ("It was a good second date") sleeps. Rover grabs her duds and splits for home, where she sleeplessly checks her phone in her own bed before suiting up and going for a late-night run through an unnamed Euro-city after a momentary flirtational chat with neighbor Luke Hardy. Seeing a familiar bar inspires a flashback to a date with Alice Drake, showing that although Rover has insomnia, she still has use for a bed.

Rover's running path takes her past Alice Wild, waiting at a bus stop on her way to her evening office cleaning job. The narrative shifts to Wild as she changes into a smock and gathers her cleaning gear. She runs into office worker Sam Bourne, who eyes her as she tidies, taking a little extra time (and hip action) to dust a desktop. When he says, "You always do that," she smiles, "I'm just doing my job," but when she comes back later dressed only in a lacy black bra-and-panty set and announces to Bourne, "I'm finished for the night"—she isn’t.

Back on the street, Rover next runs past a security-protected house as ninja-clad burglar Ariana Cortez outsmarts the keypad and heads in with an empty duffel bag. When Max Deeds surprises her with a laconic, "I knew you'd come back," there's a flashback to Cortez plotting the crime, with Deeds unknowingly nearby, before Cortez persuades Deeds to let her go.

Rover's next encounter, with an ambulance driven by Selva Lapiedra, leads to the narrative following Lapiedra rushing to the scene of an accident but failing to save the driver. Seeking solace in a bar, she finds it with cop David Perry.

When Rover gets back from her run, she runs into Hardy—literally—and he invites her to join him for breakfast. She showers off the sweat before their lengthy anal-inclusive set-to and, as the sun rises, we see Rover finally asleep in Hardy's arms.

Director Liselle Bailey seamlessly combines the disparate elements of the non-story, weaving from point to point without confusing the viewer. Well done.



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