State Like Sleep Movie Download

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Ponderous & Self-Indulgent
“State Like Sleep” is a throwback to French art films of the 1960s. The first image that comes to mind is Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg emoting for the camera with long pauses and mundane dialogue invested with gravitas.

The film begins with the deep philosophical platitude “without stories, the truth is too random.” There follows two hours of ponderous melodrama framed in the vague format of a detective yarn.

The main character is Katherine, playing the Jean Seberg role. Katherine is distraught with the apparent suicide of her husband, a star actor named Stefan. She has no idea why he would have killed himself and is outraged that the police want to preserve his pristine image. She then plays the detective in following clues that will lead her to truth about her mysterious, wayward husband, who may have been leading a secret life.

The Jean-Paul Belmondo character is Edward and played by the fine actor Michael Shannon. Edward is the bon-vivant American residing in the hotel room adjacent to Katherine in Brussels. They meet and, at her insistence, they have sex. Edward is the epicurean, living for the moment, and he brings comfort to Catherine as she vomits after ingesting cocaine and heroin. He is earnest in proclaiming that he wants to be her friend while apparently forgetting that he is committing adultery.

This slow burner of a film advances the plot tediously. In the end, do we really care about the saga of Stefan? Do we care about Katherine’s predicament? Do we care about an odd assortment of secondary characters in a hedonistic Brussels pleasure palace called the Vingt Fleurs?

At times the film nearly lapses into comedy as in the hospital scene when Katherine is arguing with her shrewish mother-in-law while her own mother lies in a coma. The machine starts bleeping, and the mother is flatlining. Yet, the argument continues between Katherine and the biddie! At this point, the film might be subtitled “The Taming of the Shrew”!

The mystery of Stefan Delvoe turns into the borefest of Stefan Delvoe. Structurally, the film is a mess with continuing flashbacks. As a tip for viewers, keep in mind that if Katherine has long hair (wearing the wig), that is a flashback. If she has short hair (Jean Seberg-style), that is in the present. After that bit of advice, good luck in trying to make sense of this boring art film. But, be on the lookout for the most bizarre scene of all: a kinky scene involving a shampoo in a Brussels bathtub that will leave every viewer slack-jawed in contemplating how such a sequence could be incorporated into the final film cut.Read More