Toute une nuit might be Chantal Akerman's post-modernist version of a city symphony, its beautifully paced rhythms and variations somehow outside the melody. The film looks in on dozens of mini-dramas that take place during one night in Brussels. Akerman's camera follows the characters through the bars, apartments, restaurants, and streets of the city she knows best, recording the action with a sly sense of humor. French critic Alain Philippon wrote in Cahiers du cinéma, "This is a comédie sentimentale treated as a choreographed dance. Moreover, it is a film about the urgency of amorous desire...also, a film about the urgency of the desire to film. The couples turn, Akerman films (tourne)."