(2007) After breaking up with Suzy (Michelle Ryan), ending a two-and-a-half-year relationship, Ben Willis (Sean Biggerstaff), an art student in his final year in college, suffers from weeks of insomnia ("as if all the oxygen had been sucked from the room"), thinking about her incessantly. His best friend Sean Higgins (Shaun Evans), pals since they were five, recommends finding another girl: "Women are in competition with each other."

With all the extra time on his hands from being "immune to sleep," he takes a job on the night-shift at J. Sainsbury, a supermarket chain in London, giving eight hours for cashback, where he meets fellow employees Barry Brickman and Matt Stephens, who are into crude humor with sausages in the deli and scooter racing in the aisles.

Feeling "a current of unknown consequences" coming toward him, not having slept for two weeks, he exists in limbo between the fantastic and the mundane, where he can manipulate time by putting the world on pause. Extrapolating from male-teen fantasies like Weird Science, director/writer/producer Sean Ellis catches winks between imagination and reality with his sexy romantic comedy, merging innocence ("What is love anyway?") with voyeurism of the female anatomy (though like Matt's boasting about the best sex he's never had, there's no on-screen diddling), opera with vaudeville's slapstick.

Invisible ("safe and untouchable") to everyone when he stops time, Ben, having an artist's eye, literally undresses women in the shopping aisles to gaze appreciatively upon their beautiful bodies.

He first became fascinated by the female form when as a child he observed a Swedish exchange student, spending the year in his home, walking about in the nude; later he and Sean discovered further mysteries in girlie magazines and paying neighbor Natalie to remove her knickers (no touching), resulting in their referring to girls available for sex as "natalies."

His early crushes were on track-star Zola Budd, his biology teacher Mrs Booth, and classmate Tanya Green. When he can't freeze the moment with Sharon Pintey (Emilia Fox), a checkout cashier at work, a whole new crush envelopes him; he becomes obsessed with drawing her portrait.

The silly-stupid interludes of a football (i.e., soccer) match and boss Jenkins's birthday party (for which Ben gets tasked with bringing a "surprise" stripper along with Sharon's asking him to be her date) provide Ben with new circumstances of contemplating his strange talent: might another join him in the interstices between moments?

When Sharon catches "the wrong second of a two-second story," Ben realizes that even though he can make time fly when he's the pilot, he "can't undo what's done."

Click here for links to places to buy or rent this movie in video and/or DVD format, or to buy the soundtrack, posters, books, even used videos, games, electronics and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.

Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

Patrick Ivers can be reached via e-mail at .