Sleepwalk

Director: Sara Driver, Sara Driver

1986 / 78min / DCP

Nicole (Suzanne Fletcher), the central character of Driver’s beguiling Manhattan fairy tale, supports herself and her son by working as a computer typesetter and freelance Chinese translator. Nicole lives in a liminal zone between arty Soho—represented by the presence of artist Ann Magnuson and playwright Harvey Perr—and old-fashioned Chinatown, as Driver’s directorial debut, sitting somewhere between downtown documentary and dream, takes a turn into the fantastic once Nicole becomes involved with drama around a stolen manuscript of an ancient Chinese legend whose myths begin to invade her everyday reality. “A luminous, oddball comic fantasy… The most visually ravishing American independent film of its year.”—Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader