There’s been a recent overkill of stories told about the super-rich, glossy films and shows set in ostentatious houses filled with characters as superficially on trend as they are painfully out of touch. It felt like needed escapism as we crawled out of the very worst of the pandemic, with The White Lotus, Triangle of Sadness, The Menu and Glass Onion all hitting a sweet spot, but it’s grown rather tiring, as Sirens, The Better Sister and Your Friends and Neighbors have felt less eat the rich and more what if we just admired their kitchens instead.
It’s become especially uninteresting as the gap between the uber-wealthy and the rest of us has widened, food prices up and empathy down. That particular anger pulses through Night Always Comes, a well-intentioned yet often inert Netflix drama based on the 2021 novel by Willy Vlautin. It’s told over one awful day, following a desperate, raggedly fatigued woman living on the breadline who must resort to extreme measures to save her family home. It’s reminiscent of the Dardennes’ similarly fraught, ticking clock parable Two Days, One Night or 2021’s underseen Full Time, which turned the day-to-day stresses of an overloaded single mother into a seat-edge thriller.
