Review: State Like Sleep
There is a fine line between hypnotic and sleep-inducing, and State of Sleep very often crosses into the former. The tone of detachment is deliberate, yet both the screenplay and direction by Meredith Danluck often combine to evoke an aimless listlessness that performances by Katherine Waterston and Michael Shannon cannot overcome.
Waterston plays Katherine Grand, an American photographer newly widowed after the death of her Belgian actor husband, Stefan (Michiel Huisman), from a supposedly self-inflicted gunshot wound. At the time of his death, the couple had been on the skids due not only to his drug use but to his rumoured infidelity. A year has passed and Katherine finds herself returning to Belgium after receiving a call that her mother (Mary Kay Place) has suffered a minuscule stroke whilst in town to sort out affairs with Stefan's mother Anneke (Julie Khaner), who is in the process of selling the couple's home. Her return to the scene of the crime, as it were, forces Katherine to confront the life she left behind, the broken relationship with Stefan in his final days, and whether his death might have been a murder.
Some amateur sleuthing leads her into a world that might be described as Lynchian were it not so heavily diluted. She encounters Luke Evans' peroxide blonde nightclub owner Emile, who claims to be Stefan's best friend but soon displays little compunction in trying to bed his widow; has a bizarre but amusing one-night stand with a stranger with a very specific fetish; and, most intriguingly, develops a tentative relationship with fellow expat Edward, who is portrayed with both rakish charm and deep melancholy by Michael Shannon. Edward is arguably Shannon's most conventional role in recent memory, asking nothing more of him than to be a romantic lead, yet he imbues Edward with such magnetism and depth of feeling that one wishes State of Sleep had been a more straightforward tale of a two people connecting with one another through their shared sense of dislocation and loneliness.
If only the other scenes had the same clear sense of purpose as the scenes between Katherine and Edward. Though rich in atmosphere, courtesy of cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt, much of State of Sleep feels disjointed, like a jumble of disparate pieces forced together. One is never entirely certain what the film is trying to achieve and it is definitely debatable whether the final result is worth giving one's self over to the film's stylish but insubstantial ways.
State Like Sleep
Directed by: Meredith Danluck
Written by: Meredith Danluck
Starring: Katherine Waterston, Michael Shannon, Luke Evans, Michiel Huisman, Mary Kay Place, Julie Khaner, Mark O'Brien, Carlo Rota
