Cinema repeatedly draws on the aesthetics of club culture, but far too often filmmakers settle for washed-out, bass-deprived sound design or generic EDM, flattening the on-screen dance floor to a hollow imitation or cheesy cliché. Following his contribution to our recent list of the best film scores of the 21st century, writer Nathan Evans selects five scenes that capture what a film-worthy night out actually feels like – from sensory overload to liberation and collective release.
If you believe what the silver screen tells you, nightclubs and raves can rain blood in case of stylishly-dressed vampires or launch the last vestiges of humanity into hard techno mayhem in mere seconds. But away from mainstream cinema looking to take a bite from clubbing’s cultural cache, taking film to the dance floor presents an opportunity to show outsiders why these spaces are vital for some communities. To achieve this, sound is their greatest tool.
What does it mean to get the sound of a club scene right? Of course, by choosing music faithful to the subculture, which is how Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting turned Underworld’s Born Slippy into a British standard. Diegetic sound can be part of the recipe, and hopefully more than post-production whoops and hollers. And for the most affecting club scenes, some alteration of the music that marks out the club’s identity, or specific feelings a character is experiencing in response to what the sound system pushes out. On the dance floor, these feelings are always heightened.
In recent times, mainstream flicks have clandestinely snuck in credible names, such as DJ Harvey’s appearance in Mission Impossible: Fallout, and increasingly, we’re being treated to lower-budget films which explore less well-known subcultures and identities, showing clubbing as more than just the weekend activity for young people to escape their 9-5s with pills and regretamine. French cinema is a haven for this, a testament to their style in both music and film.
Whether taking place over the course of one night or a scene’s entire history, cinema’s best club scenes function as a DJ would: to enhance the effects of drugs, to transport the crowd to a certain time or place, and to provide for a community.
Here are five that get it right.
© Memento Films
120 BPM (Beats Per Minute)
2017Timestamp: 1 hour 54 minutes in
Bronski Beat’s longing synthpop tale Smalltown Boy has become an enduring touchstone of queer culture and cinema – thanks to works such as 1986’s Parting Glances. For 2017 Cannes darling 120 BPM (Beats Per Minute), composer Arnaud Rebotini creates a slightly peppier deep house refix, which plays at a club session after the central AIDS activist group Act-Up Paris completes a devastating public demonstration in which they lie like corpses in the street.
Activist Nathan dances alone while his lover is in a hospital bed, stopping still as Jimmy Somerville’s vocals crawl into his ear. These activists, who fight an uphill battle to save themselves, afford themselves some reprieve, but the way Smalltown Boy – a sombre yet driven track about resisting the erasure of queer identity – cuts through shows that it isn’t that simple. A moment so effective in respecting the club while transforming it, the trick would be pulled with another 80s queer synthpop rallying cry by Russell T Davies in his Channel 4 drama It’s A Sin a few years later.
© Fox Searchlight Pictures
Black Swan
2010Timestamp: 55 minutes in
For Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 ballet psych-horror, big beat exemplars the Chemical Brothers were tasked with soundtracking the film’s only club scene, in stark contrast to the Tchaikovsky soundbed used thus far. Chosen with the help of Mary Anne Hobbs, the duo deploy a tunnel-vision groove with dark disco drums and crisply syncopated hi-hats. The audience is thrown into the scene at the song’s climax, paired with flashing images of the exact moment where protagonist Nina, high on E for the first time and experiencing her sexual awakening, metamorphoses into the idealised Black Swan – free of control and discipline after a lifetime regimented under her mother’s boot. The track’s title? An apt one: Don’t Think.
© Pierre Grise Distribution
Clubbed to Death
1996Timestamp: 10 minutes in
In her early films, French director Yolande Zauberman draws great influence from the image-conscious, fashion-forward Cinéma du Look scene, and Clubbed to Death wields this to focus on the soundtrack. The first half-hour follows protagonist Lola (portrayed by Elodie Bouchez) over the course of an all-night rave at an industrial, construction site-like club, shot almost entirely on handheld camera and soundtrack by a selection of staunchly 90s electronic labels: Mo-Wax, Ovum, Strictly Rhythm and Intangible Records & Soundworks.
The initial walk-in to the Chemical Brothers’ Leave Home captures the payoff of stepping foot into the dance, but once her high becomes hallucinogenic, she phases in and out of an introverted daze, and the music switches to Patterson’s dark trip-hop in a way that doesn’t sync up with the clubbers dancing on screen. However, like a DJ mix, the vocal sample from this track is used to transition into hard house, and Lola regains enough clarity to become aware of the men trying to take advantage of her. “The music tells a narrative not explicitly told in the film, yet constituting the film, holding it together, reflecting it,” Zauberman said in a 1997 interview.
“Cinema’s best club scenes function as a DJ would: to enhance the effects of drugs, to transport the crowd to a certain time or place, and to provide for a community”
© Prism Studios
Sorted
2000Timestamp: 12 minutes in
Around the turn of the millennium, cinema saw a trend of films centred on club culture: Human Traffic, 24 Hour Party People, Kevin & Perry Go Large, and so on. Sorted differentiated itself as a detective drama whose vigilante protagonist is an outsider to it – “What’s ketamine?” he asks a drug dealer. Seeing through his fresh, sceptical eyes, the club scenes are presented with longer shots and muddier mixes, reflecting overstimulation as the crowd’s cheers pop off in every direction. Sorted namechecks London club nights like Trade, Peach and Institute, and plays the sort of European trance and British hard house that ruled the peak era of British superclubs: Agnelli & Nelson’s El Niño, Mauro Picotto’s Lizard and Da Hool’s Met Her At the Love Parade. These sequences outshine the rest of the shallow murder mystery – that and Tim Curry’s inexplicable goatee and Shakespearean prose.
© Ad Vitam Distribution
Eden
2014Timestamp: 45 minutes in
Centred on French garage house club night Cheers from 1994 to 2013, and directed by scenester-turned-director Mia Hansen-Løve, Eden paints the chronological popularity of the French house scene through sound. Early nights brim with audible excitement from a hugely receptive crowd whose Paradise Garage dreams have come true, while an early-days Daft Punk also unveil Da Funk at a house party. By 1999, Cheers had grown into the hot new social gathering, and crowd whoops had mellowed into an ambient hum of chatter.
Compare this to the emptiness of the 2008 New Year’s Eve boat party, and the way the room shuns his selections while a salsa night down the harbour is packed out. We watch a dream slowly die, as Paul resigns himself to office work and wedding DJing. But the best of Cheers, like the revelatory and poignant sing-alongs of Aly-Us’ Follow Me and Kings of Tomorrow’s Finally will always stay with him.
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