Sleepless nights movie movie#
Sleepless nights movie full#

After the fall of Communism in 1989, the country’s curiosity for all things Western drove a seemingly insatiable appetite for imported pop culture. Here, for virtually the first time in Polish history, is a group of twentysomethings allowed to be idle - old enough to be out from under their parents’ supervision, yet not so much that they’re obliged to work for a living.

Otherwise, this intermittently hypnotic paean to youth amounts to a loose catalog of how these three millennials spend the hazy hours between twilight and dawn when security guards, vampires, and party animals do their thing - which consists mostly of dancing, drugs, clumsy attempts at seduction, and various spontaneous acts of silliness (picking fights, playing chicken with oncoming trains).

Sleepless nights movie movie#

Theirs is not quite a love triangle, though a brief fling between Kris and Eva (who is Michal’s ex-girlfriend) creates a tension between the two men that’s as close to a plot as the movie has to offer. Featuring a trio of real people more or less playing themselves, Michał Marczak’s quasi-documentary is breathtakingly beautiful at times, filmed in a style more reminiscent of recent Terrence Malick movies than anything reality-based as it floats at arm’s length behind Kris, best friend Michal (Michał Huszcza), and the girl they both covet, Eva (Eva Lebuef). Over the course of nearly two hours - compressed down from roughly a year in the life of its characters - “All These Sleepless Nights” gives us plenty of time to ponder Bagiński’s head from every angle, and to a lesser degree, the thoughts flickering inside it. In profile, he suddenly takes on an almost Neanderthal appearance, as his heavy forehead pushes down on that sharp wedge of a nose.

Sleepless nights movie full#

Head-on, he could be Michelangelo’s David, with his broad cheeks and full lips, a question mark knit in the crease between his eyebrows. From some angles, it projects a vulnerable kind of curiosity, almost childlike as questioning eyes peer out from deep hollow sockets. The same chefs keep looking up as more fighters burst through the doors, roll on the chopping blocks, plunge each other face-first into the dishwater, and use cooking implements in ways for which they were never intended.Cast as an avatar for a nation of disaffected Polish twentysomethings, Krzysztof Bagiński has an amazing face. Like a classic Jackie Chan martial arts movie, it stages its fight scenes to incorporate situations and props from the locations, and there's a running gag as the chases circle repeatedly through the nightclub kitchens. That's not a question we're intended to ask, and anyway the movie never slows enough to give us an opening. Stabbed in the mid-body during the morning drug heist, he continues to bleed while climbing and running through the club and engaging in hand-to-hand combat so extreme, it raises the question: How do the fighters remain conscious? One of the implausibilities is that the customers party on, oblivious to the deadly chase taking place in their midst.ĭirector Frederic Jardin cheerfully plunges ahead at a manic pace, as Vincent absorbs an incredible amount of punishment. This sort of chase is (supposedly) made possible because the club is jammed with hundreds of partying customers, and the music is pumped up so high that gunshots aren't heard. This sets up a desperate three-way situation in which Vincent and the dealers are searching the club for the bag and one another, while Alex and her partner seek Vincent.

He hides the bag, and his hiding place is found by one of his police pursuers, Alex ( Dominique Bettenfeld), who moves it to another hiding place. He's followed there by two other cops from Internal Affairs. Vincent goes to Marciano's nightclub, a seemingly endless labyrinth of rooms, stages, bars and restaurants, where most of the film will take place. Cut to the suburban nightclub headquarters of Jose Marciano ( Serge Riaboukine), the powerful drug dealer whose men have kidnapped Vincent's son, Thomas ( Samy Seghir), and want to trade him for the drugs.