Coming to theatres today, Friday, September 25: SLEEPLESS IN NEW YORK
Christian Frei’s look at heartbreak debuted at Visions du Réel last year. Other fests included Hot Docs, DOK.fest Munich, Planete+ Doc, Docville, EDOC, Locarno, Dokufest, DocPoint, BAFICI, and ZagrebDox.
Wishing to explore the phenomenon of lovesickness, Frei solicits the recently lovelorn via street flyers, finding three people more than happy to share their obsession on camera: Alley, rejected just days ago by her boyfriend of several years; Michael, whose longtime live-in girlfriend dumped him two weeks ago; and Rosey, who’s finally realizing the one-night fling at the Mermaid Parade she had with an out-of-town lothario isn’t going to lead to anything. While the hopelessly hipster Rosey is perhaps the most insufferable of the three, all of them are awash in such rampant self-absorption that it’s difficult to watch. Certainly, we’ve all been there before, but few of us have broadcast it to the world quite so pointedly. Luckily, Frei mitigates this cringeworthiness to some extent by incorporating the views of the often insightful Professor Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist who has studied the impact of love – and its loss – on the brain, and who refers to it at one point as a “horrible addiction.”
what (not) to doc 