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- (Dark Realistic Crime Video Risk)
Straightforward story-telling with plain believable dialogue and solid underplayed performances. Overlooked 1991 film written and directed by Paul Schrader (see "Blue Collar," "Hardcore," and 1997's wicked "Affliction"), "Light Sleeper" gives us an insider view of a small criminal underworld in which the criminals seem almost legit due to their commitment to professionalism. Careful and honest, this is a film worth seeing.
Willem Dafoe's John LeTour tries to find himself while feeling the bad vibes hanging about him.
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The Story
It is the early 1990s and the drug trade in the City is serviced by cunning, intelligent, experienced personnel. One small threesome is headed by Ann (Susan Sarandon), an aging illegal drug retailer who wants to go into the "legitimate" business of cosmetics. John LeTour is Ann's street wise salesman. John, who calls himself the "DD," treats us to a couple of days in his life when his aura is giving off odd vibes, life changing colors.
The Review
John can't sleep. He has a lot on his mind. His boss, Ann, seems to be seriously considering giving up the business of drug dealing for a legit line and he does not appear to figure into to her European plans. And, he has begun to care about his clients--the users of the products he pushes.
Susan Sarandon is deliciously devilish as illegal drug retailer Ann.
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This small film really delivers with an almost Mametian screenplay that avoids cliches save the inevitable conclusion that works (on one level) if for no other reason than to end the life snapshot. Ann and John are connected but they do not realize how closely; this mystery is left for another time and another movie that might be much better. Schrader's dialogue is loose and almost improvised giving the story a light realistic feel. Everyone talks in whispers or drug induced/deprived soliloquies.
The intelligent characters of "Light Sleeper" have been educated in their craft. Drugs are a commodity to be pushed onto the rich and managed. Unlike the flashy empire built by Nino Brown in the entertaining "New Jack City" of the same year, we are given a sneak peak into an operation that has been surgically created to avoid being seriously noticed by the authorities and to generate enough revenue to be profitable. One gets the impression that margins are close in Ann's business.
The intriguing Ann has her own tragic story that is not completely divulged. In one scene, she is shown conducting business of some sort with what appears to an Orthodox Jew who encourages her to marry. In another scene, she is ignored by an elite man from her past. She is the kind of woman who accepts her position and devises realistic plans for the future. Like John, she is world weary and aware that the retail end of the illegal drug trade is not for the long haul.
John admits to the viewers in somber narration that as the "DD" he must listen to the customers. Several of the best scenes in the film are those involving John's sales. At first, John must have had to make small talk to conceal the sale but, at some point, he really began to listen. I think that the film could have benefited from more of these scenes. Look for Saturday Night Live's David Spade who appears briefly as a customer.
All in all "Light Sleeper" was a good departure from action driven crime films with easily predictable story lines. The film would have been even better if the ending could have been brave enough to explore something other than events given to us in other films focusing on the same area.
Also, I could have watched five hours of LaTour's midnight encounters with his clients. The message that crime does not pay is tired, we have heard it, and with many of us, it has reached the limit of its effectiveness. Films like "Light Sleeper" that focus in part on those individuals who have in one way or the other benefited from their criminal acts and the consequences while developing a unique and fascinating moral code are original and should be made.
Tell me if you found the scenes displayed above oddly similar. Do you think Schrader planned it that way as some kind of foreboding imagery?
Jonathan Hickman
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