holdencopywriting Review of The Sleepy Time Gal

The Sleepy Time Gal (2001)

Beautiful, but jumbled and ultimately unsatisfying

[1/10 · 25 March 2007]

I got lost in the last half of Sleepy Time Gal. It seemed to fall apart. Bisset is excellent but the script and the director do not give her the opportunity to bring the jumbled pieces of this film together at the end. All of the actors were good but seemed to be in different films. I don't know what the film is supposed to mean. It seemed a cheat not to be shown or told what the daughter played by Martha Plimpton thinks of not finding Bisset's character before she died. We are shown the daughter getting an address for Bisset, but we are not shown what she does from then on in her search. Did she stop? Did she track Bisset only to find that she had died shortly before? If Plimpton's character had not appeared again in the film, this lack of information about her would not be so irritating. But she does appear again in the film and we are never told how she progressed in her search. In the extras on the DVD, there's an alternate reading of Bisset's speech to the daughter she gave up. She very clearly states that she is writing a letter that will be forwarded to the daughter by the agency. Why was this bit left out of the finished film? Why just have Bisset talking to the camera as if she's thinking out loud or dreaming? The film is disjointed. Ultimately, it was an unsatisfying experience to watch it.