The utter simplicity of Jang Kun-Jae’s Sleepless Night makes it feel like such a tender work of art, whose intimacy feels utterly sublime in its feeling. Here’s a film about a couple in their early 30s. They both have jobs and seem genuinely happy with each other. They eat dinner, go on walks in the park, and wash each other in the shower. This is an actual couple, who have a major concerns about where their life is heading, but it never dominates their thoughts or minds.
The digital frames of Sleepless Night (not to be confused with the French action film) might come off as almost amateurish, but Jang is no amateur. This South Korean director, making his second feature (I’ve been told his first feature, Eighteen, is equally impressive), seems to be inspired by a wave of great Asian artists behind him: Yasujiro Ozu, Hirokazu Kore-eda, and Hong Sang-soo. It's a film with almost no pretensions to raise the stakes of its narrative beyond its extremely limited scope, but it executes it with such lyrical precision, that it held me rapturous for its brief, 65-minute run time.
