You're Sleeping, Nicole

Twenty-two-year-old Nicole has the house to herself when her parents go away. She plans a quiet summer with her best friend Véronique: the swimming pool, ice cream, doing nothing. Then her older brother arrives with his band and starts recording an album in the house. The house fills, the noise starts, and the friendship between Nicole and Véronique is shaken. Meanwhile Nicole stops sleeping, and a ten-year-old boy tells her he is in love with her; his voice is that of a grown man. Stéphane Lafleur shot the film in black and white. The narrative allows small absurdities inside a realist frame and does not explain them. Summer heat, sleeplessness and nothing happening are its real subject. Julianne Côté plays Nicole and Catherine St-Laurent plays Véronique. The film screened in the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes in 2014. Who it's for: Viewers who like Canadian independent cinema, dry humour, and summer films. Who it's not for: Almost nothing happens and the pace is very low. The strange elements of the narrative are also never explained.