Sleepwalk with Me (2012)

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"To have come apart, I must have once been raveled."
- "Draw a Crowd" by Ben Folds Five
Once, my brother was sick when I was home from college or high school - I can't remember when exactly. At one point, he walked downstairs and sat on my lap. Now, he wasn't a little kid at the time, so this was weird. He shushed me, looked around, and gave me a hug. I asked him what was wrong. "Shhh. I have to study." It was the middle of summer, so I'm not sure what he had to study. He gave me another hug, told me he had to study again, and walked into the bathroom. The toilet flushed and he walked out, completely normal. It was weirdly unsettling, but something I can't ever forget.


Comic Mike Birbiglia made a name for himself through his stand up career and his appearances on NPR's "This American Life." With the help of Ira Glass and Jacob Jaffke, Birbiliga wrote, directed and starred in Sleepwalk with Me, an independent comedy that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Best of NEXT Audience Award. The film is autobiographical, telling the story of Birbiglia's start as a comedian and the disorder and relationship that led him to success as a comedian.

The film begins with Matt Pandamiglio (Birbiglia), a struggling comedian and bartender, speaking directly to the camera. Matt serves as his own narrator, providing voice over and a few short asides as he drives a car to his next gig. His story is similar to most stories of struggling comedians: he lacks the confidence on stage until he finds his niche, where he begins to tell jokes about his relationship. As he books more and more shows, his eight year relationship with Abby (Lauren Ambrose) begins to fall apart, though there is no real evidence that the relationship was "together" to begin with. What's worse, the stress from performing, his relationship, and his parents (played by Carol Kane and James Rebhorn) triggers a sleep disorder called rapid eye movement behavior disorder, characterized by advanced sleepwalking in which he acts out scenes from dreams.

courtesy of nerdist.com

While the story is the thinly layered set of actions that holds an otherwise shell of a story together, what makes Sleepwalk with Me a successful first film is the "weak" charm of Birbiglia. Much like his stand up routine, he is extremely self-effacing, quietly humble, and soft-spoken. His approach to this movie is extremely Woody Allen-esque to the point of near parody. But, while Allen's somewhat narcissistic and neurotic storytelling techniques are what make his films wholly original, Birbiglia's demeanor doesn't allow him to overwhelm his film. If Birbiglia gave the appearance of the type of hyper-control over this film that Allen effectively holds over his work, it would never functionally succeed. The beauty of Mike Birbiglia is that he is an everyman and he doesn't need to explain it to anyone. Woody Allen is far from an everyman. And that's a good thing.

Based on Birbiglia's stand up, one man show, and semi-autobiography, Sleepwalk with Me takes the idiosyncrasies of relationships and a self-proclaimed stilted existence and personifies them in some hilarious mishaps during Matt's night escapades. From trying to escape a jackal to hoping to outrun a missile, Matt's unsuccessful attempts to escape a dead relationship, which are constantly thwarted by his inability to take action or his difficulty handling the idea of hurting Abby, is acted out in subconscious aggression as he sleeps. As he says in the film, he wants get married after he's sure there's nothing good left to happen in his life. That's not saying that marriage is a type of grand finale of happiness. But it is the end of a pretty important sentence.

If you're a fan of Birbiglia's comedy, you'll enjoy this film. Being one of them, I did, but I do recognize a number of the jokes here from his stand up routines. There's nothing wrong with that, but it does make the audience for this film a much smaller demographic. There's a lot in the film that feels like sleepwalking - blind plodding through movie relationship cliches, mostly. In addition, Matt is not an entirely likeable character, unless you understand Birbiglia as a person and comedian. In another film with the same plot, he's the antagonist. But, Birbiglia's presence and Lauren Ambrose's navigation of a character that could have been vilified quite a bit more than it was keep the film from being a lazy autobiographical account of a relatively low brow, and plausibly unlikeable comedian.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take a nap. Typing "Birbiglia" that many times has made my head spin.

SHOULD YOU SEE IT: Encouraged