Ich kann nicht schlafen

Writer-Director Claire Denis is telling a pretty strange tale in her "J'ai pas sommeil." Reportedly inspired by real-life news events, the focus is on an unsavory series of murders in a large French city, and various people somehow related to these happenings. These folks do not all know one another or even, in some cases, come in contact with each other. More strangely, Denis incorporates a few people who don't seem to be related to the events at all. The film's structure is free form, and various scenes are deliberately presented in a disjunct manner. There is some interest generated in trying to figure out what's going on, and in fact, there are a couple of coldly frightening scenes of calculated murder. I found myself not being attracted to nor empathizing with any of these characters. I merely observed with some interest. The general viewer response will depend on personal preferences. All in all, I found this ultimately to be a very slightly above average film work.

You might have to be a foreigner to understand the plight of not belonging to the main culture of a country. The characters portrayed are deracine from their native countries, attracted by the promised land of capitalism, functioning mainly in the twilight hours of Paris, where they are mainly prey for sexual predators. Exploitation of these immigrants continue as it was in colonial times, except this time is not so overt. The illusion of freedom is thin. The impossibility of communication thick. Interacial affairs doomed, as are their children. Pretty bleak, but portrayed with sensitivity by Denis who shows us the underside and post effects of colonialism in contemporary Paris.

A movie genre that I've occasionally seen focuses on the gritty underbelly of supposedly idealistic places. Claire Denis's "J'ai pas sommeil" ("I Can't Sleep" in English) is one such movie. The protagonists are a group of in a dismal section of Paris who find each other amid a murder spree. This group includes a man from Martinique (a reminder of France's colonial history) and a woman from Lithuania (one of the many people who saw no prospects in their countries once the Eastern Bloc collapsed).

Quite a different image of France than we're used to, but this group of people still has it better than most people in the global south. The point is that millions if not billions of people worldwide live in these conditions. The people depicted in this movie could just as easily be people from Latin America seeking a better life in the US.

Basically, if you're reading this, then you're one of the privileged few. Definitely check out the movie.

By using any traffic system, you can go anytime, anywhere, anyway you like. This is called evolution. But in other way, that means you may surrounded by many strangers easily no matter what. No consideration if you like it or not. I call it destruction of human relations.

You can't deny thinking about it seeing this film. Cos it has scenes full of it. Distance between people, emptiness of the civilization.

We have to be separated cos they wanted us that way. So they can easily control. We've been cut out from our own lives and pasted on a huge system just to run it.

Not enough lines, but silence speaks. I like these kind of smart film. Hail Ozu.

This film is a fictional portrayal based on the true story of Thierry Paulin, who with the help of his lover murdered twenty or so elderly women in the Montmartre area of Paris, during the eighties. He was known as the "granny killer." What I think confused the viewer who commented before me was the following: The United States has created a crime genre in which the detectives are heroes and the murderers are detestable yet mysterious. In a way, the pleasure in these films comes from watching the murderer act out our unconscious aggressions without our having to admit any identification with him. Claire Denis tried for a truer, more sociological portrait of the situation. She attempted to show the murderer's daily life and interactions with his community in a fashion that proved that, in some ways, he was no different than any other human being. There are no heroes or villains in this film, just a group of immigrants interwoven by the forces of urban life, and one of them happens to be a murderer. The film is a demystification of the "noir" genre. Since people are so used to seeing crime portrayed according to the usual formula, this film can be confusing at first glance. But the achievement of this film is monumental because it manages to draw us into the intimate life of a murderer without hyperbole and without demonizing him. It abandons the sensationalism created by the media to bring us face to face with a real situation.