Sleep with Me (1994)

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Why would anyone watch a movie about self-absorbed twenty-somethings? Because it's funny and effortless. Maybe it helps that I'm a self- absorbed twenty-something. Nonetheless, it can be tiring watching a movie featuring your usual sympathetic protagonists who try to be UN ambassadors of good will or even psychotic antiheroes who have redeeming qualities--scriptwriting 101.The first act can be quite a bore to most people, but I warmed up to the characters, mainly because the acting looked extremely natural. The succeeding scenes slowly became hilarious and effective particularly due to the sharp dialog. The film exhibits vignettes of typical social situations with untypical wit; no earth-shattering conflicts nor out-of- this-world what-if's. It's life, but a bit more amusing.If you like Slacker, Kicking and Screaming, Before Sunrise, and Funny Ha Ha, you'll like Sleep with Me.

I must admit that I do not know whether the film's success is due to, or in spite of, the multiple writers. When one is aware that several writers, including the director, wrote different scenes, it is a challenge to find just what the cohesive factor is that makes the film so engaging. Admittedly, some scenes are ineffective (the initial poker scene), while some are wildly successful (the poker scene invaded by the characters played by Joey Lauren Adams and Parker Posey). It is one of those films that is MORE than the sum of its parts.After several viewings on DVD (I wish I had seen it in the theater), I realized that many details, at first insignificant, contribute to its impact. The film begins broadly, simply and beautifully -- Stolz, Tilly, and Scheffer are on the highway coming home from a road trip. The open western landscape is practically a metaphor for their friendship. However, the film slowly narrows in, and as the love triangle develops,the view gets less broad. A beautifully conceived and shot example of this is the poolside party scene that begins as a B&W camcorder viewfinder "point of view", then cuts to full color at a particular point of introspection. It sent chills up my spine.The visual details in the location designs and cinematography are rich and revealing, and seem more considered and professional than one finds in most low budget independent films. However, this strong consistency in production values neither spotlights nor hides the writing dissimilarities.I strongly recommend this film.

Spanning the time from the marriage of Joe to Sarah through the various stages of their marriage breakdown, this follows Joe's best friend Frank as he tries to hold his life together despite his love for Sarah.Written by about six different writers, each doing a different section. It all plays like the opposite of Friends. The group of friends are less polished and in some respects seem more realistic, however in other scenes their activities seem very far fetched and outlandish to be real. However at the end of the day the central strand of the story around Joe, Sarah and Frank is good and interesting. The only problem with this strand is that more time is spent watching Joe and Sarah experience problems rather than falling in love - this makes their relationship hard to support or believe in. Whereas in contrast Frank's longing for Sarah is shown to be developing and it makes it easier to support this.The film's main weakness is that the supporting characters are little more than fonts for witty banter and never convince as real people. Stoltz is actually quite good, however Sheffer is allowed more audience sympathy and comes off better. Tilly is excellent (and is very beautiful) she brings the torn wife to life. Of the rest of the cast there are plenty of indie faces, but the real stealer is Tarantino in a short cameo as a party guest talking animatedly about Top Gun's homoerotic sub text.Overall it is very rough around the edges and at times feels a little bitty, however it is refreshingly free of mushy sentiment and is quite funny.

What I was most impressed with was the mature way that this film handled the fact that relationships are not always black and white. The truth of the matter is that people do stupid stuff. We get drunk and flirt with people, we try to make our mates jealous, and yes sometimes we cheat. I get so tired of movies that treat these acts as absolute cause for a break-up, rather than the normal ups and downs of any healthy sexual relationship.