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.

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.

I enjoyed this film that had beautiful images of the male body, and a colorful mix of characters. Although the director, Claire Denis is a straight, white, woman, the film is full of homosexuality images. These images are done artfully however, do not limit the films appeal to a wide range of people. Although a serial killer is loose in Paris, this film is not a classic thriller, in the sense that the viewer does not feel on-edge, and actually might feel comfortable with the killer as did I. I would recommend this film as a good peek at what it is like to be an outsider in Paris.

This is a very strange film, indeed. In the plot there's something about a Latvian immigrant in Paris, a couple of homosexuals, an old lady's murderer, some African immigrants (I think they're from the Maurice Islands), a woman who is a hotel manager and protects the young Latvian, a transvestite who has his own show on a nightclub, and some other crimes and weird stuff.

But it's not a bad movie after all. Despite the confusing plot, the film has some very nice sequences, some shocking scenes and one of the most beautiful actresses I've ever seen, Ms. Katherina Golubeva, whom I'd never heard about before this film. If you have a lot of time to spend, and you're in the mood for an unusual motion picture with a gorgeous young actress, "J'Ai pas Sommeil" is a good pick.

I can sort of see what (co)writer - director Claire Denis was trying to do here: a serial killer "thriller" minus any of the Hollywood flash, cross-pollinated with a "slice-of-Parisian-life" type of film (there is also a bit of "Pulp Fiction" going on, not in the chronology of events which is straightforward but in the way various characters pop in and out of each others' stories; however, because both films came out at the same year (1994), it's hard to say if there was any actual influence). Unfortunately, the result is boring, meandering and interminable. The Lithuanian girl's sections are marginally more interesting than the rest, mostly because Yekaterina Golubeva is stunningly beautiful. Gotta love that totally inaccurate IMDb plot description! * out of 4.