I Can't Sleep

A French film set in Paris. There is a serial killer in the city. Old women are being killed in their flats and the press has given him a name. The film follows three people and their lines cross very late. The first is Daiga. A young woman who drove from Lithuania; she thought she would act in Paris and there is no work. She starts cleaning at a hotel. The second is Théo. A carpenter of Martinican origin; he wants to leave France and his wife will not give up their child. The third is Camille. Théo's brother; he performs in nightclubs and lives with his boyfriend. He is the killer. The narrative does not keep it as a secret. Who he is becomes clear early and the tension does not come from there. From there the film looks at daily life. Breakfast, work, a hotel room, a family meal, rehearsal, dancing. The murders are inside that flow. The narrative does not emphasise them and does not enlarge them as scenes. What the narrative is interested in is not crime but neighbourhood: its idea is that this went on for months and nobody noticed; he sees his mother, eats with his brother, and lives on the same street. Nobody suspects him because nobody really looks at anybody. Daiga sees him once. That moment is the film's only true encounter. The narrative explains nothing. Cause, childhood, motive; none of it. That is deliberate. Claire Denis builds the affair not as a case but as a condition of a city. The story comes from a real event; there was a comparable case in Paris in the eighties. Agnès Godard shot it; the camera is mostly on bodies and faces. There is little speech and the narrative does not like giving information. Yekaterina Golubeva, Richard Courcet, Alex Descas, Béatrice Dalle and Line Renaud are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes Claire Denis's cinema and narratives that do not explain. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a crime story; the film describes no investigation and has almost no plot.