I Can't Sleep

Director: Claire Denis

1994 / 110min / 35mm

Loosely inspired by the exploits of the so-called “granny killers” Thierry Paulin and Jean-Thierry Mathurin who made headlines in the late ’80s with their savage slayings of some 21 elderly women in and around Paris’s 18th arrondissement, Denis’s third theatrical feature stars Alex Descas as Theo, a homesick Martiniquais in Paris; Richard Courcet as Camille, Theo’s hedonistic sociopath brother; and Yekaterina Golubeva as a Lithuanian immigrant who, working as a maid in the seedy hotel where Camille and his lover/accomplice hole up together, begins to suspect the two men may be connected to the bloody spree that has set the city on edge. A hard-to-shake depiction of urban anomie and nocturnal trawls, as solemn and beautiful as Golubeva herself.

35mm print courtesy of Arena Films

Part of Alt Divas: Argento / Dalle / Golubeva