THE SLEEPY TIME GAL

Musing on the transitory mischance and coincidences of our lives, yet as intricately formal as the Bach piano pieces on the soundtrack, this new drama by Christopher Much (“The Hours and Times,” 16th CIFF, 1992) follows parallel heroines on intertwined courses. One is Rebecca (Martha Plimpton), a young corporate lawyer, uncomfortable being a cog in the machinery of business, who travels to Daytona to negotiate the takeover of an obscure, privately-run radio station. Its assets include a tape archive preserving the dulcet voice of the Sleepy Time Gal, a broadcast music personality whose soothing tones could lull listeners up and down the coast on balmy Florida nights. Meanwhile Frances (Jacqueline Bisset), a twice-divorced model, writer, activist and traveller, has learned that she has cancer and feels compelled to put her affairs in order. She reunites with an old lover she hasn't seen in 30 years, and seeks peace with the photographer son and erratic mother she neglected in favor of her lifestyle. But there is one person she would like to meet but can't, the illegitimate daughter she gave up for adoption long ago. Rebecca is that daughter, and Frances, in one of her career incarnations, was the Sleepy Time Gal – two women converging to a poignant coda.