The Sleepy Time Gal (2001)
Average Rating: 6.9/10
Reviews Counted: 19
Fresh: 15 | Rotten: 4
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 7.5/10
Critic Reviews: 7
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 1
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.2/5
User Ratings: 471
My Rating
Movie Info
Two women connected by family are drawn closer by fate in this low-key drama. Frances (Jacqueline Bisset) is a woman in her early fifties who had already begun to sense time was running out for her when she learned that she has cancer. While Frances is fighting the disease through medical treatment, she decides it's a good idea to do some travelling before it's too late, and she pays a visit to Bob (Seymour Cassel), a former boyfriend who now owns a farm in rural Pennsylvania. To Bob's surprise,
Jan 1, 2001 Wide
Jan 28, 2003
C-100 Film Corporation
Cast
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Jacqueline Bisset
Frances -
Martha Plimpton
Rebecca -
Nick Stahl
Morgan -
Amy Madigan
Maggie -
Frankie Faison
Jimmy Dupree -
Carmen Zapata
Anna -
Peggy Gormley
Betty -
Seymour Cassel
Rob -
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All Critics (23) | Top Critics (9) | Fresh (15) | Rotten (4) | DVD (2)
Munch's screenplay is tenderly observant of his characters. He watches them as they float within the seas of their personalities. His scenes are short and often unexpected.
Playing a role of almost Bergmanesque intensity ... Bisset is both convincing and radiant.
A thoughtful, moving piece that faces difficult issues with honesty and beauty.
Its rhythms and currents sink into a viewer's consciousness and linger in the mind.
It's delicate, haunting and sultry.
Bisset delivers a game performance, but she is unable to save the movie.
A captivating and intimate study about dying and loving...
It has a subtle way of getting under your skin and sticking with you long after it's over.
Doesn't reach for the obvious buttons that a weepy mainstream cancer film, like 'Stepmom' or 'Life As a House,' would push.
Although sensitive to a fault, it's often overwritten, with a surfeit of weighty revelations, flowery dialogue, and nostalgia for the past and roads not taken.
When the film ended, I felt tired and drained and wanted to lie on my own deathbed for a while.
Bisset still commands the screen as the graceful and outspoken Frances.
Excellent performances from Jacqueline Bisset and Martha Plimpton grace this deeply touching melodrama.
To the film's credit, the acting is fresh and unselfconscious, and Munch is a marvel of reality versus sappy sentiment.
Audience Reviews for The Sleepy Time Gal
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Top Critic
Meanwhile, in a different city, Rebecca, unhappy with her job as a lawyer and split from her boyfriend, decides to seek out some questions to her own life, including finding her birth mother, and start afresh. The two characters stories link together in various ways as, separately, each remembers and learns more about their lives.
Firstly, I should get some criticism out the way. This is a very lyrical film, striving for and often achieving a kind of cinematic poetry. Unfortunately, this yearning extends to the dialogue, and some of the characters have the most ridiculously over-articulate conversations, even if they're just talking about everyday things. At one point Rebecca says to someone she's recently met "I admire your pragmatism". Ok, maybe some people do speak like this, but in the context of the film it feels a little daft. The other problem is the first 20 minutes or so. Very little information is offered as to what the hell is going on, and I found myself a little 'sleepy' myself. However, this does actually (eventually) play to the films strengths, as we discover more things about the characters and previous scenes make more sense. Don't get me wrong though, this isn't a film full of major surprises or twists; it's more a film about honesty and emotion.
So now the plusses. First of all, the acting is great - Jacqueline Bisset deservedly got lots of praise and is equalled (thankfully, otherwise the film could have fallen apart) in ability and scope by Martha Plimpton's performance. Nick Stahl is also nicely understated. The way memories are shown is very inventive, by use of black-and-white film sped up and blurred images, still photographs and paintings and camcorder footage. Finally, the photography is, at times, stunning, with beautiful location shooting in New York, Pennsylvania and Florida.
It's a bit of a depressing film in parts, but it's also refreshingly unsentimental, instead quietly poignant, and has an ending that mixes sadness and optimism in a way I wasn't expecting.