Dream for an Insomniac is a bizarre little offering written and directed by Tiffanie Debartolo; low on plot, characters, sets, ideas and budget, it yet remains quirky enough to amuse.
Opening in black and white, we quickly catch the drift that our heroine (Ione Skye as the girl who hasn’t slept since her parents were killed when she was 6 years old) is looking for someone with blue eyes just like Sinatra. No, that’s wrong. We don’t catch the drift, it’s hammered into us with all the subtlety of Mr Universe wielding a sledge-hammer. The electric blue credits run over monochrome shots of Sinatra-saturated sets and a matching soundtrack. How could anyone miss the point?
At which very point my heart started to sink. “Please, please,” I prayed... “Please don’t let the stylish monochrome give way to full colour when the heroine met her Sinatra-eyed match!”
And just as I’d relaxed, thinking that my prayers had been answered... plam! A shameless nose-dive into the cesspit of film cliché: as he gazed soppily into The Girl’s eyes, electric blue flashed out of The Boy’s eyes (Mackenzie Astin with hunger pangs and unattractive gingery stubble)... and the screen was flooded with COLOR!
In an instant, the film lost class and style, the players lost their looks, the film became yet another banal rom-com. Ho hum, pass the chocs. Now what’s the prob? Oops, The Boy already has a girl friend. So the heroine does the morally-correct thing, and backs off, right? Nope. This is San Fran where all yer need is lerve... oh, and a fluffy best friend like Poor Jen. (Or is it Survivor Jen, these days?)
So does The Girl manage to nick the man of her dreams from his plain-faced, blue-stocking bidey-in? Sadly for plain-faced girls everywhere... yes. Oh Blimey, chuck that toffee at the screen.
And yet... and yet... it’s nicely written and directed, simply acted, straightforward, unpretentious... this curious little movie has it’s own charm. Very strange.
