by Cláudio Alves
Some films prove their greatness by challenging the audience. Some engage the mind, others spellbind the senses, immersing those who watch them in formalistic dreams of celluloid and digital beauty. Abrasive, cerebral, immersive, cinema can be a wonder, but we shouldn't suppose there's a single path to cinematic glory.
Don't get me wrong, I love my slow cinema, my European art-house hits, and Philosophical reveries. To cry with Carol is magic, to wander through Stalker's desolation is like dreaming with open eyes and to see New York, New York is to applaud its spectacle of ambition. But a cinephile can yearn for simple pleasures, too. Sometimes, one just wants to forget life's troubles and escape, to enjoy the goofiness of a nice comedy or the sweetness of an impossible romance. Sometimes, one just needs a hug.
And I've only just discovered that While You Were Sleeping (1995) fulfills that need with the warmest of embraces…
Recently, I've been exploring the career of Sandra Bullock, especially her 90s work. One night, as I was feeling down and a bit grumpy, I decided that it was finally time to see her first big solo headliner hit, a movie that signals the point when a spunky supporting actress became an A-lister. I'd been aware of its popularity for years and now I understand. As I watched While You Were Sleeping, for some joyful 103 minutes, my frown vanished and the cloud above my head dissipated.
Entertainment-based antidepressants are undervalued and I think I just found a new remedy to add to my list of audiovisual medicine. If for nothing else, I strongly recommend While You Were Sleeping for its prophylactic qualities. That said, it might be time for me to stop wandering around in pharmaceutical metaphors and actually describe some of this movie's particularities. For starters, the story is a collection of insane contrivances, the sort which only make sense when filtered through the prism of Hollywood escapism.
Sandra Bullock plays Lucy, a Chicago Transit Authority worker who's got a helpless crush on a handsome man that has never paid even the slightest attention to her. On Christmas Day, the beautiful stranger finds himself in a dangerous predicament and Lucy saves his life. Through a series of improbable hijinks, our heroine ends up as the fake fiancée to a comatose man whose family welcomes her with open arms, smiling faces and industrial doses of comforting kookiness. She also finds love, not with the previous object of her desires, but his brother.
Well, sort of.
Part of the delightful nature of this whole affair is how the true love story at the center of the narrative isn't one forged between passionate lovers. While You Were Sleeping works best as a Christmas themed story of loneliness overcome, the quest of a woman to find a family that needs her as much as she needs them, who loves her. Bullock might have great chemistry with Bill Pullman, but her success in the role hinges on her ability to be both an outsider to the family as well as someone who compliments their existing dynamic.
It's easy to imagine this going astray with a different performer at the helm. This story is problematic, to say the least, and Lucy's actions transcend the ridiculous to come very close to genuine insidiousness. Though, when we're watching Bullock falling in love, such concerns seem anodyne if not altogether inexistent. Her smile is luminous and her open expressions radiate the sort of earnestness usually reserved for dewy-eyed cartoons. In other words, she makes it work as only a movie star can.
She's helped along the way by a stellar supporting cast and a surprisingly sophisticated lensing. Regarding the other actors, Glynis Johns is the first among equals as a dotty doting grandmother whose air-headedness is as hilarious as it is endearing. In matters of cinematography, Phedon Papamichael shoots Chicago like an especially beautiful moving postcard. I've never seen the Windy City looking so gorgeous and welcoming, like the perfect setting for romantic misadventures and cheery winter celebrations. To spend a Christmas in Chicago is surely one of those movie-inspired fantasies I’d add to my Bucket List if I had one.
Watching Sandra Bullock smile while beautifully lit by Papamichel is like being hugged in a loving embrace that's warm and smells like cinnamon and holidays and feels like movie magic. I'd go so far as to say I'd prefer the actress had won her Oscar for this lighthearted comedy rather than for The Blind Side. However, that's a matter to be explored at a later date.
Other episodes of this series:
M (31) by Mark Brinkerhoff
Rear Window (54) by Chris Feil
Z (69) by Mark Brinkherhoff
Cabaret (72) by Ben Miller
Enter the Dragon (73) by Cláudio Alves
The Parallax View / Three Days of the Condor (74/75) by Lynn Lee
Farewell, My Concubine (93) by Tim Brayton
Memories of Murder/The Host (03/06) by Cláudio Alves