While You Were Sleeping/L'Amour à tout prix

(Love at all Cost)

Ah, back in the days when Sandra Bullock was just doing silly but funny romantic comedies as opposed to silly and unfunny films. And a very Christmassy film at that.

While You Were sleeping is the story of the girl next door Lucy, who works in the subway somewhere and is in love with Peter Gallagher. Well, she's never spoken to him but you know, he is gorgeous, in a 90s, I like big eyebrows sort of way.

One day, he slips on the platform and nearly gets killed, but she saves him and, while he's in a coma in hospital, she makes his family believe that she is his fiancee. Hilarity ensues.

I might be exagerating a bit, but the family's great and the films really has some cute funny quirky moments.

In the end, she falls in love with the brother (I mean, who wouldn't? He's the president in ID4, for God's sake). And at the end of the film, when the comatose guy asks her when all of this happened, she cheesily replies "while you were sleeping". The end.

The French title suggests something completely different.

1- That the character is desperate. Well, yeah, I know, she is a bit, but that seems to be the rule in all the "new" chick flicks: Desperate gi

rl (with no family and/or just the one best friend), pretty but in a crap job or pretty in a good job but not much luck in love falls for a guy (out of her league most of the time) and he makes her life so much better (Pretty Woman, The Prince and I, etc.).

In this case, the subway girl falls in love with the lawyer first. But ends up with a carpenter (Jesus metaphor here? God knows) so she's not really stepping up in the world.

2- That she would do anything for love, and that she even would do that. Well, yeah she lies. She says she's the guy's fiancee when he has never spoken to her. But all is fair in love and war, isn't it? But she isn't a manipulative plotting person like the title would suggest (More later on Gus Van Sant's To Die For).

So the title loses the "fairy tale" aspect of the English title and makes it a conspiracy theory film.

Well done.

Oh, the film should be added to your list of Christmas Classics if it's not on there already... Just for that moment where a paper boy on his bike slips on the ice and falls. Funny!