"Sleepwalking" starts off a bit like "Frozen River," focused on a single mother struggling to make ends meet in rural America (though it was actually filmed in Saskatchewan). But the movie quickly veers off in another direction, shifting that focus onto her 13-year-old daughter, Tara, and her younger brother, James (the girl's uncle), who are suddenly forced to rely on one another for comfort and support when Joleen temporarily bows out of the picture.
When her boyfriend is arrested for growing marijuana, Jolene (Carlize Theron) and Tara (AnnaSophia Robb) are forced to move in with James (Nick Stahl), a soft-spoken, good-hearted fellow in his 20s who is two months behind in his rent and who barely scrapes by on what he makes at his low-paying construction job. Soon, Joleen has split the scene, James has lost his job, and social services has taken Tara to live in a foster-care facility. So James and Tara decide to head out onto the open highway, stopping off at roadside diners and motels, and staying one step ahead of the authorities who are in pursuit of them.
"Sleepwalking" is one of those gritty, slice-of-life dramas that sympathetically and accurately depicts what life is like for the working poor. It is rife with authentic details and rich in small town atmosphere. Director William Mahr and cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchia really know how to extract the essence of a locale for mood and effect, making the bleak landscape and stark setting integral elements in the drama - an effect greatly enhanced by Christopher Young's rich and evocative acoustic-flavored score. Superb, naturalistic performances by the three lead actors make us truly care about the people they are portraying and the things that are happening to them.
"Sleepwalking" is not without its flaws, however. For one thing, the movie undercuts some of its carefully crafted verisimilitude with its casting of "name" actors in a few of the key secondary roles - primarily, Woody Harrelson as James' friend and work buddy, and an over-reaching Dennis Hopper as Joleen and James' abusive dad. These parts would have been more effective had they been played by less-familiar actors (though I do realize that, without such star power attached to the project, a movie like "Sleepwalking" might never have gotten made in the first place). More seriously, the otherwise excellent screenplay by Zac Stanford falls apart a bit in the final third, resorting to stereotyping and hokey melodrama when it most needs to stay true to its characters and their situations.
Still, despite the patness, "Sleepwalking" is a quietly powerful, richly atmospheric tale of a group of troubled but essentially decent people struggling, despite their all-too-human weaknesses, to make their way in the world.
