While You Were Sleeping is an all-time nice rom-com, equally heavy on the rom and the com, that includes a stellar love triangle, Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman at their most charming, a raucous supporting forged, and the definitive rundown on “the lean.” But it shines as a vacation film too — one which exemplifies what’s finest and hardest concerning the season. Bullock’s Lucy is lonely, and pining for each the loving household she misplaced and the massive and boisterous one she by no means had. Christmas, with its enforced cheer and household traditions, does not make it any simpler for her to be on her personal. But with the Callaghans, she finds not simply romantic love but additionally welcome into one such household with new traditions and boundless care. The heat on the heart of this film is what the vacations must be all about: welcome, empathy, forgiveness — and sure, kissing a good-looking floppy-haired man underneath the mistletoe.
Lucy (Bullock) is a token collector for the L in Chicago. Peter Callaghan (Peter Gallagher) is the good-looking stranger who rushes via her turnstile every morning, and who she daydreams about as she hoists her Christmas tree via her second-floor window, feeds her cat, and tinsels her house — all the time alone, all the time be-sweatered. But when Peter falls onto the tracks one winter day, Lucy jumps into motion, saving him from an oncoming practice. A combination-up on the hospital has his huge, loud, and loving household satisfied she’s Peter’s new fiancée, and his grandmother’s (in)handy coronary heart situation retains Lucy from setting them straight straight away. While Peter lies in a coma, Lucy lies too — maintaining the ruse on the insistence of Saul (Jack Warden), a detailed pal of the household. And then she meets Jack (Pullman), Peter’s brother, who falls for Lucy with out falling for her cowl story.
The Real Hurts Christmas Can Bring
Over the course of 1 romantic Chicago winter, Lucy is immediately embraced by the Callaghans, invited to their Christmas celebration the place a gift is already ready for her — one she clutches to her coronary heart somewhat than opening straight away, because the giving is the reward for somebody used to being on her personal. Lucy and Jack kiss awkwardly underneath the mistletoe, have an much more awkward New Year’s Eve, and maintain one another as they slip awkwardly on the ice. When they lastly come collectively for good on the fateful L platform the place Lucy saved his brother, it’s the magic and heat of the vacations that made it doable.
But what makes the film such an efficient vacation story, even as soon as it ideas over into a brand new yr and the lengthy stretch of winter doldrums that follows December’s celebrations, is the best way it acknowledges how onerous today could be when mirth is difficult to fabricate. Lucy is deeply lonely; greater than that, she’s grieving. Her beloved father obtained sick, she upended her life to take care of him, after which he died, leaving her on her personal in a metropolis she didn’t select, making an attempt to make sense of a life that was lit gold by a loving glow that has now gone out. She doesn’t have somebody to hold her tree as much as her house, so she rigs an (ill-fated) pulley system. She doesn’t have a adorning associate, so she and her cat festoon the tree in tinsel in an effort to brighten an empty house. The holidays could be oppressive of their cheer — depictions of household, of huge meals and piles of presents and heat hugs, are in all places. When you end up with out these issues, the fixed reminders of what you’ve misplaced make it a decidedly un-wonderful Christmastime.
The Callaghans Bring Lucy Back to Life
But the place Lucy is alone, the Callaghans are something however — they’re the picture-perfect household, virtually begging to be slapped on a Christmas card. They’re affectionate and heat, rowdy and loving, instantly welcoming and able to imagine the most effective. Jack and his father Ox (Peter Boyle) have a household enterprise. The household collected Saul as a member of the household whereas he was deep in his personal grief, simply as they instantly do for Lucy. They are every thing she longs for, and their holidays are as bursting with pleasure as hers is starved for it. Who wouldn’t proceed pretending to be their comatose son’s fiancé when the corporate is that this good?
But the bittersweet secret on the coronary heart of While You Were Sleeping is that everybody’s sleeping, not simply the good-looking man within the coma. Lucy is sleepwalking via her life till the Callaghans’ infectious affection and Jack’s knowledgeable lean wake her up. Jack is preserving his head down, minimizing his passions to defer to his father’s goals for him — and his father, loving as he’s, doesn’t wish to snap out of it (as per Moonstruck, one other A+ vacation rom-com that While You Were Sleeping owes a clearly whimsical debt to). Once he comes out of his coma, we be taught that Peter’s charmed life isn’t as good as his high-rise house and high-powered job would make it appear; he was emotionally asleep lengthy earlier than touchdown in his hospital mattress. The holidays give everybody an event to get up into a comfortable, fulfilling new life by providing all of them the chance to behave on their finest instincts.
Waking Everyone Up to the Best Part of the Holidays
The approach out of Lucy’s lengthy tunnel of grief and disappointment isn’t stockings and cocoa, it’s believing she deserves to be pleased — the vacation merriment simply exhibits her that’s true. We know higher than she does that she has individuals who take care of her; we see the impact she has on each member of the Callaghan household earlier than she does. The yuletide embrace of this loving household simply helps her imagine it, and begin betting on herself and going through the reality. By embracing the engagement he doesn’t bear in mind (as a result of, in fact, it by no means occurred), Peter rediscovers real feeling — amnesia have to be the one rationalization for forgetting one thing that feels so proper. Jack has to be taught to belief that his household’s huge love isn’t only for present, and that he can strike out on his personal with out leaving him behind.
And at each flip, the characters select what’s finest concerning the holidays. Ox provides his son the reward of belief and freedom. Lucy tells the reality, with gratitude and love for the household that embraced her and for the kind-eyed man who sees her for who she is. And the household does what households do, particularly within the heat glow of the vacations: they forgive. They select empathy and prioritize good intentions, extending their unconditional love and understanding to Lucy, a girl who cherished them sufficient to turn out to be a greater and braver model of herself.
As swoony because the Lucy and Jack romance is — and oh holy evening, is it — its admittedly wacky twists and turns work due to the real heat and kindness they lengthen to one another. The holidays are a time once we’re meant to like our neighbors and strangers alike, once we attempt to act from a spot of generosity somewhat than shortage. ‘Tis the season to be jolly, and with the Callaghans, Lucy can feel it for the first time in too long. By embracing what’s finest concerning the holidays, the Callaghans assist Lucy see the methods her new yr can imply a brand new life, with new objectives and new love.