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STATE LIKE SLEEP
Director: Meredith Danluck Cast: Katherine Waterston, Michael Shannon, Michiel Huisman, Luke Evans, Mary Kay Place, Julie Khaner, Bo Martyn MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:44 Release Date: 1/4/19 (limited) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 4, 2019 There are, wisely, no clear-cut answers in State Like Sleep, but unfortunately, there are also no clear-cut questions. This story of a woman grappling with the mystery of her husband's death moves back and forth in time, but its present-day section doesn't offer a sense of narrative or thematic trajectory. The woman is Katherine (Katherine Waterston), a professional photographer who returns to Brussels a year after the apparent suicide of her actor husband Stefan (Michiel Huisman). She only returns because her mother Elaine (Mary Kay Place) suffered a stroke while figuring out the logistics of selling the couple's old apartment with Stefan's mother Anneke (Julie Khaner). While in the city, Katherine re-lives the events that led to her husband's death and tries to make sense of the seeming senselessness of it all. There's a feeling of randomness to the way that Katherine's investigation unfolds within director Meredith Danluck's screenplay. In fact, the movie never really establishes Katherine's motivation, since the entire enterprise arises by chance (the mother's stroke) and even the suspected nature of Stefan's death isn't firmly established until later. For a while, it simply seems as if Katherine is merely wandering through memories, showing how she and her husband's relationship was tried by his drug abuse and apparent philandering, and stumbling upon pieces of a puzzle that she doesn't even know exists. Some of those pieces include Stefan's cellphone, his mercurial best friend/drug supplier Emile (Luke Evans), and a bag filled with cash (Michael Shannon plays her hotel room neighbor, whose appearances are so convenient that we think he might be part of the mystery, but his character just ends up feeling out of place). The plot toys with the notion that Stefan's death wasn't as straightforward as it seemed, but Danluck never decides if the complexity should come from the study of Katherine's grief or from the apparent mystery of her husband's demise. The movie starts in the former vein, meaning that we're at a distance from the plot, and it eventually lands at the latter, meaning that we're kept from fully investing in Katherine's state of mind. We get some answers, albeit from unreliable sources, by the end of State Like Sleep, but the movie never resolves upon a steady goal. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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