(Spoilers.)
A cold, glacially paced and alienating movie that is more interested in
conveying a mood of isolation and all-encompassing inability to communicate
than presenting a functional, solid thriller even halfway interesting enough to
not put the viewer to sleep. The excruciatingly long opening scene in which the
camera maintains an interminably prolonged long shot with a minuscule glide as
two women never stop talking (mostly off screen) about a needed form on the company
computer pretty much sets the pace for everything that follows. (The next
scene, of the workers leaving the office building, uses the exact same visual
style — indeed, the director resorts to snail-paced moving camera shots so
often that one gets the feeling the cinematographer was on Quaaludes while
filming and, later, the film editor was on vacation for much of the
post-production.)
Trailer to
Sleeping
Pill:
Bad Faith
tells the tale of Mona (Sonja Richter of The
Substitute a.k.a. Vikaren
[2007 / trailer], When Animals Dream [2014 / trailer] and The Homesman [2014 / trailer]), a single
woman with a notable inability to communicate or connect who has moved from
Denmark to some Swedish town populated by people with a notable inability to
communicate or connect. The narrative plays with the basic structure of an
Italian gaillo, in which someone sees something and then spends the film trying
to solve the crime: one evening after work, Mona stumbles upon the victim of
the locally active serial killer and, as it seems to make her hot and bothered,
she decides to pursue and expose the killer.
Just who the killer is, however,
is way too easy for the viewer to figure out, as there are only three main
characters to the tale: her, the obvious red herring (Kristoffer Joner of Next Door [2005 / trailer], Dead
Snow 2: Red vs. Dead [2014
/ trailer], Hidden a.k.a. Skjult [2009 / trailer]), and the logical killer (Jonas Karlsson).
Assorted tertiary characters get introduced along the way — the inspector, the
single-mother neighbor and her nosy little girl, the male co-worker who
couldn't give a fuck about #MeToo,
the stakeout cop in the car — but their given presence is way too negligible
for any of them to function as an alternative red herring or viable real
killer.
The
unnamed Swedish port city in which the film transpires seems to be a big one,
one of concrete and multi-story buildings, but it is nevertheless small enough
that the woman, red herring and logical killer constantly cross paths. The
earnest dialog, often punctuated by long pauses, is generally delivered with
the solemnity of a junior high-schooler revealing the existential realities of
life, while the subtitles reveal that the production firm didn't bother to get
a native English speaker to do the translating of the deeply riveting
statements of intelectual transcendence. (Really, not having a native speaker do it might be excusable in,
dunno, places like Miramar, Borneo or even China, but not in Western Europe.)
The singular sex scene is perhaps the best scene in the movie, but not because
it's hot — it isn't — but because it truly conveys all the warmth that two
people with a notable inability to communicate or connect would have were they
to get naked and exchange body fluids. The second most effective scene is a
short scene where the male co-worker tries to get much more physically close to
Mona than she wants, for it reveals her to be anything but a pushover.
And
thus the dankly shot Bad Faith / Ond
tro slowly (like at a snail's pace) advances to its brain-bashing
showdown and subsequent final scene of inferred twisted suburban happiness
which, if reality or logic were of concern, would indicate that the couple
might someday in the future, should there ever be a sequel, become the next Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, Ian Brady
And Myra Hindley, or Gerald And Charlene Gallego.
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