At Midnight Plays a Dance Tune

When the Dutch filmmaker Roy Seerden’s mother dies, there’s no holding him back. Sex, drugs, roaming through the night: his life transforms into a bundle of energy, grief and detachment. At the same time, he can’t help thinking of Antoine, the strange neighbor from his youth. Antoine the non-conformist, who was eventually thrown out of his home and ended up on the street. Without putting it into words, Seerden draws an obvious parallel between Antoine and himself.

At Midnight Plays a Dance Tune is a fast-cut collage of images, an experimental explosion of impressions that feel amazingly intimate. Seerden exposes himself literally and figuratively, almost more through the closeness of his sonorous, meandering voice-over than when he’s on-screen. The conversations with his former neighbors provide a moment of calm, as they tenderly remember Roy and his mother in his childhood. These moments underscore his vulnerable but courageous openness in documenting this chapter of his life in his own distinctive way.