The Man Who Sleeps

(1974)

★ 7.8 IMDb · 144 votes

Genres: Drama

Year: 1974

Runtime: 78 мин

Country: France, Tunisia

Director: Bernard Queysanne

Cast: Жак Списсер, Ludmila Mikaël

Plot

A young student decides to have no more interaction with the world than is needed to minimally sustain life. His increasingly automaton-like behavior is coupled with a strange clarity of insight about the world around him.

A young Parisian student who, without any dramatic event triggering the change, gradually withdraws from the world around him. He stops attending university, distances himself from friends, and drifts through the streets of Paris in a state of emotional detachment and indifference. Narrated in the second person, the film adopts an introspective and minimalist style, closely observing the protagonist's daily routines as he embraces passivity and isolation. As he attempts to erase desire, ambition, and connection, the city becomes both a backdrop and a mirror to his inner emptiness. Through spare imagery and meditative voiceover, the film explores alienation, existential withdrawal, and the fragile boundary between freedom and solitude.