POFFY COMING SOON
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ROUGH NOTES |
Let Sleeping Bitches Lie.
by
Jon Dunmore ©
Bored toll booth attendant Lucy (Sandra Bullock) inadvertently saves the life of rich bachelor, Peter (Peter Gallagher) that she has fantasized about from afar. In her fantasy, she is married to Peter and travels Europe on his ticket. While Peter is comatose in hospital, Lucy sees the opportunity to deceive Peter's family into believing that she is Peter's fiancé. That is, until she meets Peter's brother Jack (Bill Pullman), is instantly attracted to him and then doesn't know how to hook up with him while not looking like she is dumping Peter simply because he is in a coma.
How thoughtful of her: not wanting to appear like the gold-digger she is.
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING confuses young girls: which brother should I god dig with if they're both equally sexy? The movie confuses young boys as well: someone as charming as Sandra Bullock isn't a gold-digger - her parents must have beaten her, or she needs money for her mother's heart transplant; she couldn't possibly be a layabout toll booth attendant with no skills and want something for nothing!
Written idiotically by Daniel G. Sullivan and Fredric Lebow, and directed adequately by Jon Turteltaub, WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING creates a lead character whose very essence, whose reason for being - is a complete and utter lie. And by casting Sandra Bullock (replete with sweater sleeves pulled down over her fingers - god! I hate that cutesy fashion!), they expect us to find this lying bitch endearing.
Peter's family are a treasure trove of overly nice characters: Jack Warden as Uncle Saul, Peter Boyle as dad, - - - who welcome Lucy with open arms.
And Jack
Bill Pullman (Jack),
Sandra Bullock (Lucy),
Peter Gallagher (Peter),
Jack Warden (Saul),
Peter Boyle (Ox).
Romance and betrayal all schlepped together in one character, in one movie, and no one protests because the romantic betrayer is a cutesie.
First of all, in any normal circumstance, Lucy's fixation behaviour would be called psychotic, or neurotic at the least. It's not 'true love' to want to marry someone because you see them every day on their way to their high-status job. Lucy was desperately looking for a way out. Seeking that step up, through the medium of male involvement, she chose Peter. (The fact that Peter's family were normal, middle-class, mentally-well-balanced - and FUN - individuals is just another plot-convenience.) Lucy, in exhibiting her obsessive-fixation, was crazy. But the filmmakers like to call crazy 'romantic'.
And why must 'romantic' always blunt 'realistic' When Lucy pulls the unconscious Peter off the railway tracks, we hear her whisper sensuously to him, "Hi..." - as the steel wheels of the train crunch by ONE FOOT AWAY FROM THEM. Now, I'm not hassling the film-makers over this obviously erroneous misuse of true-life audio; but in forsaking reality in order to create this 'romantic moment',
they have engendered in all the weepy girlies in the audience the desire to hope for a re-creation of these circumstances in Real Life. And when these girlies eventually do meet someone in the proximity of a train's bogies, they're gonna wonder why they have to SHOUT LIKE A VILLAGE CRIER to be heard, utterly ruining the 'romantic' idiom.
Peter became inaccessible, so Lucy chose Jack, Peter's brother. If she had not met Jack - who was also a Nice Guy - would she have gone through with her Gold Digger's plan of marrying the 'rich lawyer', just so she could visit Florence?
Though her 'involvement' with Peter became more serious through the misunderstanding of Peter's family, she stuck around with the deceit hanging heavy, while her confession to Saul was merely to convey to the movie audience some kind of conscience.
Unhuman motives are flying in every direction: After she did the 'kindly' thing (with that touch of sexual desire tacked on) of visiting Peter to see if he was being taken care of, she had no further need to risk embarrassment with Peter's family by returning to the hospital. Yet she did, which means that she must have been simply gold-digging Peter. But she escaped being a shallow gold-digging bitch only because she was shallow enough to not stick to principles and fall for another guy - Jack. (But let's remember that both these men were higher status males.)
Lucy's growing card-house of lies, in any real family situation, would be inexcusable once the truth was revealed. Would people who have been so humiliated be that ready to accept apologies from such a liar simply because this person admits to "loving" one of their brothers/sons? Would they have been so forgiving if they intelligently rationalized the situation and realized Lucy was really only a gold-digger?
The paradox is: Jack the brother wins us over because he's so noble and nice yet we still want and expect him to backstab his comatose brother and steal Lucy - something which is against his character type. When she asks if there is "any reason that you can give me why I shouldn't marry Peter", and he reticently replies 'no', the audience is waiting for him to GO AGAINST CHARACTER and say "Yes - I love you goddamit!", but if he did, he would not be that 'likeable guy' that you have grown to like in the course of the film. That 'loyalty' (to his brother or his conscience) is the likeable quality, yet you still want him to be a BASTARD! The audience knows the real farcical situation regarding Lucy's lies - this doesn't make his hoped-for move on her any more socially-acceptable. For if he did move in on his brother's supposed fiance, you'd be rooting for the Bad Guy. As usual.
And we condone Jack's irrational behaviour because he is the Good Guy. We ascribe his irrationality (like when he zooms over to her place after hearing of her 'pregnancy') to 'caring for her'. It was Jealousy. Lucy's lustful neighbor, though he is after the SAME THING, is viewed as a slut sex pervert - Why? Because he is of the same low status as Lucy - he must remain a Just Friend; the film-makers inherently realise this much - that if the film ended with Lucy getting it on with an equal-status male, the storyline would really take a nosedive. The audience senses though (correctly), that the burly, loveable neighbour-guy only has a chance to be taken under the covers after the nuclear holocaust... when guys like Peter and Jack don't exist anymore. But since they do, let's stick with the high-status reality, and decorate it with other lies..
Eventually, Peter is shown to be an inherently shallow character, so the fact that she turns him down at the altar doesn't affect us, or him. In tying up those loose 'romantic' ends, the film stoops to high farce when Peter is revealed to be Even Shallower when his originally-betrothed blonde bim storms in, slipstreamed by her outraged husband - Peter actually proposed to a married woman - O! for fun! - now we can all laugh about it...nothing is really serious.. in the movie, or in Real Life...
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