The Man Who Sleeps

The Man Who Sleeps (Un homme qui dort, 1974) is a French art-house film you can watch online on iFILM. Directed by Bernard Queysanne from Georges Perec's novel of the same name, it follows a Parisian student who stops going to his exams, stops answering the door, and reduces daily life to its minimum: eat, sleep, walk the city after dark.

Jacques Spiesser plays the student without a single spoken line. The entire film is narrated by a woman's voice — Ludmila Mikaël — addressing him in the second person. It's a structural choice that makes the withdrawal feel oddly intimate, like overhearing the inside of a mind going quiet.

One of the few films that makes numbness cinematic. Stream The Man Who Sleeps (1974) online on iFILM.