Saturday, July 19, 2008

An Oblique Glimpse of Evil (rated 4 stars)

by Claire Denis

I would say that the less you know about I Can’t Sleep going in, the better. Claire Denis makes beautiful, elliptical films that sneak up on you and leave most of the work at making sense of things to the viewer. In I Can’t Sleep we’re introduced to a set of characters and as the film progresses we find out why they are in the film and how they are connected. Denis plays with the sound, so at times we hear the ambient sound from somewhere else and don’t hear what characters are saying since it doesn’t really matter. In the background of everything are a series of unsolved murders of elderly women, but Denis wisely doesn’t focus on that, but on the people as we watch them interact and go about thier lives in a film that explores themes of alientation and evil in a subtle and indirect way.

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