Dir/Wri: Jason Yu | Fantasy Thriller, South Korea 95’
Sleep is the debut feature title of South Korean writer director Jason Yu and specifically references classic 1970s paranoia films such as The Exorcist and The Driller Killer. But the deeper resonance may be the ground breaking Ira Levin/Roman Polanski novel/film Rosemary’s Baby (1968).
Sleep is divided into three chapters and explores the relationship of a married couple for whom pregnancy and impending birth starts to engulf the wife with doubt about the intentions of her husband. This will test how much he deeply cares for her and the unborn child. While the husband starts to behave ominously during the night, scratching his skin raw while asleep as well as sleep walking, the wife has to think outside of the box with more and more desperate ways to protect both her husband and unborn child.
During the second of three chapters the wife begins to adapt the apartment they live in with padlocks, lights at night, hand gloves, bedding straps and rails over windows. A medium will visit and offers exorcism, the wife’s mother provides unhelpful advice, food becomes an issue and a charming pet dog will become an unwelcome target for the couple. As strange behaviour increases during the hours of sleep, the film speculates on the nature of marriage and is aided here by accomplished sympathetic performances from Jung Yu-Mi and Lee Sun-Kyum as the couple.
Director Yu carefully uses architectural spaces to reveal inner states of mind which will also include a bath and a car doubling up as spaces to sleep in. As the wife fights to save the marriage, with the mantra “together we can overcome anything” visible on a wall, she talks to her husband about sharing life together providing a warm, loving, romantic touch to the film’s darkening paranoia.
Unlike Rosemary’s Baby, not everything in Sleep is clear about what is causing the states of paranoia. If not related to specific references to satanic malevolence, what are the other forces and factors at play here? In the final chapter, the film shifts focus towards the wife. Her loyalty and love within boundaries of familial relationships will also be tested.
The film has been described by Bong Joon Ho (the director of Parasite as an accomplished debut which it certainly is. As Yu learnt his craft working on films including Okja, an apt title for the film could have been Parasomnia which resonates with the theme of disturbed patterns of sleep. Peter Herbert
PETER HERBERT is CURATOR MANAGER at THE ARTS PROJECT
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