Sleepwalk with Me

Film (2012)

With Mike Birbiglia (Matt Pandamiglio), Lauren Ambrose (Abby), Carol Kane (Linda Pandamiglio), James Rebhorn (Gary Pandamiglio), Cristin Milioti (Janet Pandamiglio), Marylouise Burke (Aunt Lucille), Loudon Wainwright III (Uncle Max), Aya Cash (Hannah), David Wain (Pete), Marc Maron (Marc Mulheren), Sondra James (Colleen), Kristen Schaal (Cynthia), Jessi Klein (Lynn), Wyatt Cenac (Chris)

Matt Pandamiglio (Mike Birbiglia) is not doing brilliantly as a comedian, but he has a great girlfriend, Abby (Lauren Ambrose). They have been together for eight years, and are hovering on a decision about marriage and family. But Matt’s career gradually begins to emerge, which changes the landscape of personal and interpersonal expectations. Matt is also a sleepwalker, which gets him into all sorts of difficulties.

Birbiglia has told his sleepwalking story on This American Life whose impresario and host, Ira Glass, helped this film to come to light.

Matt’s story in the film, obviously a thin fictionalization of Birbiglia’s, has a pathetic quality, but there something seductive in his way of being open and vulnerable that draws one in. He is a sad sack, but once he finds enough courage to be forthright, he is, as a comedian, able to gain an audience. That, in effect, is the main theme of this movie. The narrative about the relationship with the girlfriend and the history and treatment of the sleepwalking thing are more or less incidental to his emergence as a successful comic.

All the pieces complement one another in a collage like way, but the film never takes many pains to show how they are related. The sleepwalking is the obvious oddity about this character, but, apart from being a curiously dangerous and a seemingly unmanageable condition, it is not clear what it has to do with Matt’s dilemma about his career or about the relationship with Abby.

Nonetheless, I found this film pleasing enough to watch. Birbiglia has a nebbishy and semi-articulate style which has enough uniqueness and charm to garner one’s attention.

How the film’s narrative shows the evolution of Matt’s comedic style is its most successful trait. Perhaps the most compelling scene is when, after bombing onstage, an older comic comments in passing on a line Matt utters in private to him about his relationship – I don’t want to get married until I’m sure it’s the best thing that will happen to me -and urges him to make that sort of thing part of his act. Matt takes the older comic’s advice; the audience response is palpable and Matt’s career takes a serious turn.

Lauren Ambrose, who charmingly played Claire Fisher, the daughter and the youngest child, on the great HBO series, Six Feet Under (2001-2005), is a wonderful actress and renders Abby’s as so down to earth and emotionally generous that one can only walk away from this film thinking that Matt is truly an idiot to not appreciate her fully.

Usually, stories from This American Life go incredible detail and analysis about the various elements that create complexity in a situation. Here, however, Matt’s story gets told in a fairly superficial way and the film surprisingly attempts nothing more. The film comes across as somewhat complacent with that approach, content to present its components without asking too much about how they are related.

As long as the viewer can accept this linear narrative and just appreciate the ironies to which it refers without expecting much investigation into or explanation of the psychology in the protagonist or his primary relationship, the film is adequately entertaining.

– BADMan