ALEXANDRA SIMPSON: NO SLEEP TILL (2024) NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 2025

People, Americans, a Florida hurricane, explored visually, eavsdropping on quiet amid chaos

In her highly visual, seemingly random documentary film, but actually "part fiction, part real," projections of the director, Alexandra Simpson's fantasies upon them and a particular small town in Florida, surrounding a major hurricane in the state, Simpson captures the imagery of the great Ameriican color photographers of Sally Eauclaire's 1981 classic, The New Color Photography - William Eggleston, Joel Meyerowitz, Neal Slavin, John Pfahl, Michael Bishop - the list goes on and on. Here, under the eye of dp Sylvain Froidevaux, we see car lots and swimming pools, little night clubs and highways, skateboarders and bike riders and a motel aglow with colored neon. The unifying element is a hurricane that is going to devastate part of Florida, but has soon passed one piece of it by. The filmmaker has a great sympathy for this small Atlantic coastal Florida town, but possesses a European point of view. She was born in Paris and grew up there, but spent summers in Neptune Beach, Florida, where the bulk of the film was shot. She has said in interviews that Claire Denis is her greatest inspiration, and Denis' skill and blending intimacy and mystery can indeed be felt as an influence here.

As with the still photographs, people and situations are introduced randomly, but the filmmaker, like the still photographer, has a unifying vision forming and changing as she goes. There are certain people the film comes back to, particularly a pair of young black men, Mark and Will, but they are friends from childhood from the sound of it, who play as a tricky comedy team where one comes into the act seemingly as a heckler. The standup guy delivers food by bike as a day job. We see him there at first. Later he lures his partner, knowing the storm is going to upend everything for a while, ("But we'll come back to our lives, man"), to take a trip to DC and Philly to see friends and check out acts and opportunities.

Another locus is the youhg man with long red-blond hair who's a "storm chaser" by game, with lots of gear, ready to follow the hurricane, watching, watching, to see wheere it's going to head. Sitting at the wheel of his white truck he narrates the storm's progress with appreciation, for himself and for us. A third locus is a woman who's been left behind by a skateboarder. There's a couple o notes, one that leaves her a video clip of him riding and falling and waving, another that says "We knew it was over from that night at the restaurant when..." Which reminds us at the outset some older people were let go from their jobs by a boss who tells them when this is over, they won't be coming back. They can start putting their lives together now. A theme: a lot of people are going to put their lives together after this weather event. And this town is, like so many places, a victim of gentrification.

Some are deep in the storm, some are escaping it, some have nowhere to go, even though an area in the outside of the film is receiving an over-and-over "advisory," meaning they are supposed to evacuate the area. And driving along, the young black guys, the comedy team, drivng north, see a whole landscape around them turn dark as the elecdtricity goes out, and they're scared, and the guy who's driving starts going around in circles, not going north at all now. But the point is there are as many different relationships to the hurricane that "unites" them as there are places and people. Some choose not to "evacuate," including the storm chaser with the red-blond hair. A guy rides a small bike around in a lot, doing wheelies and circles: the evacuation alarm screeches, and with a jolt, he does a very fast spin. But the cop is on a loudspeaker asking him to leave. The storm chaser is hiding.

And toward the end of this round of gentle, subtle impressions, a small family is roused to leave in the a.m., the little boy in PJ's with his teddy bear. But they line up and smile for photos, with fireworks going off, and the kid saying, "cool!", and then we see people partying, as we learned at the outset some like to do, in a big storm, if they think they're safe.

The Sally Eauclaire analogy notwithstanding, viewing this film requires a quite different level of concentration from looking at a book or a show of still photographs. You cannot scan through these places and people and images, but must wait for them to go by at their own various different paces, which takes patience and discipline. It is fun, it is a meditation, but it is hard because it requires concentration. This is not a conventional narrative. You must put it together for yourself. We may not be ready for it, but if feels new.A magical film.

No Sleep Till, 93 mins., debuted at 2024 Venice Critics' Week, winning a jury special mention, also shown at Monterrey, Poland, Stockholm,Belfort (France), Marrakesh, and Los Angeles. Screened for this review as part of New Directors/New Films, MoMA and Film at Lincoln Center. Showtimes:

Wednesday, April 9
8:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Alexandra Simpson

Friday, April 11
6:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Alexandra Simpson

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.