Review of I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006) by Tor M — 12 Dec 2015

I Don't Want to Sleep Alone follows a group of people as they attempt to make connections with the people around them in a desperate plea for companionship in the context of a lonely world.

The mattress motif is brilliant, a perfect metaphor for what it means to build something with another person, allowing for a finale that stands with the absolute best of his work (it's incredible how he's so consistently able to end his films in ways that feel absolutely perfect).

The last twenty minutes or so are absolutely breathtaking, some sequences in a staircase that resembles M.C. Escher's Relativity seeming legitimately otherworldly, and the cruel, depressive darkness that looms over the entire experience has an incredible payoff during this period.

I've never given credence to the theory that Tsai is in love with his straight leading man as I've found it to be moderately belittling to reduce a masterful director's personal life to an old gay stereotype, but if there was ever a film to make the case that this was actually true, it would be I Don't Want to Sleep Alone.