For a psychothriller on sexual obsession and voyeurism, “While the Women Are Sleeping” comes off as glacial and antiseptic, like “Rear Window” without murder, or “Lolita” without violation. Exploring a creatively blocked novelist’s descent into neurosis after he meets and begins stalking an older man and his teenage squeeze at a Japanese seaside hotel, the film is tinged with Freudian mumbo-jumbo and recycled meta-fictive tropes, and Chinese-American helmer Wayne Wang’s stylishly glum aesthetics and mechanical plotting never get under the characters’ skin — or their sheets — leaving the story’s kinkiness an under-explored domain. The pic boasts festival cachet thanks to its arthouse-friendly leads, Takeshi Kitano and Hidetoshi Nishijima (fresh from their partnership in “Mozu the Movie”), though mainstream domestic response looks drowsy.
The film is adapted from a short story by Spanish writer Javier Marias, exploring a middle-aged man’s ritual of taping his young lover while she...
The film is adapted from a short story by Spanish writer Javier Marias, exploring a middle-aged man’s ritual of taping his young lover while she...
- 2/17/2016
- by Maggie Lee
- Variety - Film News
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