While You Were Sleeping (1995)
(In French, On TV, May 2019) It’s amazing how many romantic movies are built on a foundation of aberrant behaviour. At least While You Were Sleeping acknowledges that issue in the complications that follow when a lonely woman sets herself up as the fiancé of a man in a coma, and finds herself embraced by the rest of his family. It is, to be fair, a small triumph of execution from director Jon Turteltaub that the film comes across as sweet and romantic rather than problematic and stalkerish—although the filmmaking team wisely nixed the original idea that saw the roles gender-flipped. It certainly helps that the female lead here is Sandra Bullock in one of her breakthrough performances: she sells the “cute lonely girl” element essential for the film’s success, and having Pull Pullman as the true male lead also contributes. It’s all very familiar but well executed (with the tick-tick-ticking time bomb of the upcoming revelation adding dramatic tension), wrapped in Chicago flavour and set in the Christmas/New Year timeframe as a further excuse to be indulgent. While You Were Sleeping is still very much not a kind of behaviour to imitate in real life, but it’ll pass as a 1990s excuse for a romantic comedy.