Dream for an Insomniac Reviews

A slight, sleekly polished debut feature propelled by a kinder, gentler SWINGERS vibe. Tiffanie DeBartolo's film chronicles the romantic travails of beautiful gloomster Frankie (Ione Skye), who seldom sleeps and is given to dreams in which Nietzsche whispers into her ear that the essential nature of man is evil. Orphaned as a child, Frankie lives above and occasionally works at the Blue Eyes café, a San Francisco coffee bar owned by her uncle Leo (Seymour Cassell). Frankie has a head full of quotes (from Kurt Cobain to Aristotle without missing a beat), thinks she's through with love, is given to dramatic declarations, wants to be an actress and loves all things Sinatra. She and best friend Allison (Jennifer Aniston), a fellow thespian with a tiresome penchant for practicing exotic accents on her pals, are planning to move to L.A. in two days. But then Frankie meets David (MacKenzie Astin), a handsome would-be writer who can match her prodigious memory citation for citation and quite literally brings some color into her life: The film's first 20 minutes are in black and white (which has the felicitous effect of making Skye look like a '60s Italian movie starlet), but when David arrives it switches to color. The effect is awfully clichéd but works pretty well, which could be said of the movie as a whole. It's been kicking around for a couple of years and boasts a roster of surprisingly high-profile talent for a first film, including Skye, Aniston, long-time character actor Cassel, cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, MacKenzie Astin (son of Patty Duke and John Astin), executive producer Christopher Lloyd. Several have some connection to the film FOUR ROOMS, on which DeBartolo worked as assistant director to Alexandre Rockwell.