"The Insomniacs' Club" is a story with 3 core characters, less than 20 characters total, few settings and hardly any fanciful film-making. It is a simple movie... and also a nice one. With a bit of a throwback vibe to those 1990s US indie dramedies from the likes of Richard Linklater and Kevin Smith as well as similar home-grown films like "Temporada de Patos" and "Almacenados", "Insomniacs'" aims to keep it fairly slice-of-life, with the drama and laughs coming from realistic dialogues and situations that are just absurd enough to seem pulled out of genuine "convenience store in the wee hours of the morning" anecdotes.
The trio is conformed first by Danny (my personal favorite, wonderfully played against type by Cassandra Ciangherotti), the almost-obligatory indifferent, young, artsy one who, being the night-shift clerk at the convenience store that serves as the meeting point for the Club, also functions as its core. Santiago follows, perhaps the clearest Insomniac, office clerk by day, and tormented by a recurring and inconclusive dream at night, his insomnia leads him to chat with Danny during her shift. Finally we have Estela, the newcomer veterinarian who is only just starting to find herself unable to sleep since discovering her pregnancy.
Each character has a main driving force, some more time-critical (Estela having something of a deadline to go through with her planned abortion), others less (Danny wanting to leave the store for a photography school... someday). From here, the plot follows a fairly natural flow as it hints at a vague love triangle situation, which is then replaced by a certain equilibrium, then the "everything seems to be going wrong" moment and finally a nice conclusion where not everyone gets what they wanted originally nor is everything wrapped up perfectly but in which the trio is still mostly able to move on and find themselves in better places emotionally.
By this point the film makes it very clear it is perfectly content in being nice (at least in terms of the Trio). The conflict moments are hardly caused by malice from their part, they mainly originate from dealing with the jerks that surround them. Controversial topics like Estela's possible abortion are treated with a quiet respect rather than the melodrama and shock that other Mexican media would usually go for. With this overall aura of niceness permeating throughout, it's difficult to have particularly strong feelings towards the movie, it is as difficult to hate as it is to love it. It's a nice movie, that at the end leaves you feeling nicely... and sometimes, nice is nice enough.
The trio is conformed first by Danny (my personal favorite, wonderfully played against type by Cassandra Ciangherotti), the almost-obligatory indifferent, young, artsy one who, being the night-shift clerk at the convenience store that serves as the meeting point for the Club, also functions as its core. Santiago follows, perhaps the clearest Insomniac, office clerk by day, and tormented by a recurring and inconclusive dream at night, his insomnia leads him to chat with Danny during her shift. Finally we have Estela, the newcomer veterinarian who is only just starting to find herself unable to sleep since discovering her pregnancy.
Each character has a main driving force, some more time-critical (Estela having something of a deadline to go through with her planned abortion), others less (Danny wanting to leave the store for a photography school... someday). From here, the plot follows a fairly natural flow as it hints at a vague love triangle situation, which is then replaced by a certain equilibrium, then the "everything seems to be going wrong" moment and finally a nice conclusion where not everyone gets what they wanted originally nor is everything wrapped up perfectly but in which the trio is still mostly able to move on and find themselves in better places emotionally.
By this point the film makes it very clear it is perfectly content in being nice (at least in terms of the Trio). The conflict moments are hardly caused by malice from their part, they mainly originate from dealing with the jerks that surround them. Controversial topics like Estela's possible abortion are treated with a quiet respect rather than the melodrama and shock that other Mexican media would usually go for. With this overall aura of niceness permeating throughout, it's difficult to have particularly strong feelings towards the movie, it is as difficult to hate as it is to love it. It's a nice movie, that at the end leaves you feeling nicely... and sometimes, nice is nice enough.