Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An interesting film for those not obsessed with tidy plots, November 21, 2000
By A Customer
"I Can't Sleep" is an odd film--with a plot about a number of overlapping stories, about people who live on the margins of Parisian society. The story is not so much held together by a continuous or integrated methodology, but rather between the tension of the external urban images of a Paris that belie the subversive, sometimes pathological actions of its main characters, whose existences we are privy to through the action of the film and because of the properties of narrative film itself. The film has the easy-going, wan attitude of an early Jim Jarmusch movie combined with a quasi-documentary sloppy styled cinematography. Its main purpose, it seems, is to show us how our outward and anonymous appearances, particularly for those who live in large urban areas, mask an abundance of attitudes, objectives, obsessions, etc., and that who we are is not what we seem.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Unique and Exotic Experience, October 12, 2002
By A Customer
This is one of my favorite films. It's definitely in my top 10 list. I first saw this film in 1998, and it made me want to go to Paris. Just watching this film, you actually feel like you're there in this strange, odd, and artsy underground world
in Paris. The music is dreamy and exotic and so are the strange mix of characters; French, Russian, African. The interwining stories are bizarre and interesting.I've been a fan of Claire Denis ever since I saw this film. She's quite talented and grew up in France and Africa. Her understanding and realistic portrayls of Africans and peoples of the African dispora is refreshing and tres gentil. I would recommend you watch this unique film.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
The Point Being, March 26, 2001
I believe that people who search for the director's point or meaning to the overlapping stories in "I Can't Sleep" only do themselves a disfavor. This film, with its dreamy music, pensive acting and odd flavor seems more about the lack of a point. All the plots in this film have connection, yet nobody in it really connects, and there seems to be very little meaning for any. This can be a frustrating film experience; but overall, leaving it so empty, the beauty is that the viewer is forced to fill in his or her own details and use his or her own brain. Definitely not a film for all, but those who like challenging, slow-moving and very pensive material... you can fo much worse. Also check out Nenette et Boni, an even better film by the same director, and Beau Travail, a beautiful tone poem of an adaption of Billy Budd, still by Claire Denis.
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