The film follows five people: René, Marco, Laura, Rebecca, and Theo. While Marco and Rebecca are making passionate love, René takes Marco’s car for a drive and nearly runs into Theo’s truck and horse trailer. René gets out without a scratch and leaves Theo trapped in an overturned truck. Theo’s daughter, who snuck into the horse-trailer without his knowledge is badly injured. In the hospital, the girl falls into a comma and is tended to by Laura, Rebecca’s roommate. Theo can’t remember René, and René doesn’t come forward to report either the stolen car or the accident. Laura later meets René and they fall in love, which brings René face to face with Marco, the man whose car he stole. Still, René doesn’t come forward. Theo, the desperate father and nearly bankrupt farmer, is trying to remember what happened, but the only thing he can recall is the strange shaped scar he saw on the back of René’s head.

The brilliance of the movie comes from the continued suspense of having these five characters constantly cross each other’s paths and never connect the events. The sense of invisible strings that connect everyone and give ordinary moments secret, extraordinary significance, is the single force that holds our attention. The characters, who are not only interesting, but very well portrayed by the talented actors, are disappointing because they are kept from addressing their challenges and weaknesses. In a distinct feel of the European art film, Winter Sleepers leaves its world in a state of spiritual and emotional entropy as if to point out the tragic blindness and disconnection that seems prevalent in the way humans too often relate to each other. When it comes to embracing a higher vision, the film remains helpless and hopeless. Such may be the state of the real world for most, but that is exactly why human beings have an endless capacity to strive for improvement. Even so, though, as a commentary, Winter Sleepers more than hits its mark, and that just might be its intention.

We hoped and yearned that a mysterious connection between the characters would ultimately blossom into conflict, awakening, and perhaps redemption. Rebecca, for instance, is an attractive and talented young woman emotionally and spiritually stuck in a purely sexual relationship with Marco. She knows Marco is wrong for her, but the attachment to his attention and the pleasure he gives her keeps her from either challenging the relationship to the next level, or breaking up with him. Her hesitation might ring only too true to many women. In his own way, Marco tries to evolve the relationship, but when he fails, he is also incapable of simply ending it. He, in fact, becomes the only character that willfully hurts another. That might be why he is the only person to receive punishment.

René and Laura presented even greater opportunity for powerful character development. Their intimacy seems to be growing from genuine understanding and regard, and their conflict might have brought them to a higher realization of their love and their lives. Laura could have found out what René did. Her struggle to keep loving René despite the tragedy he’s caused could have been the catalyst for René’s transformation and triumph. René, because of his malady, is perfectly suited for the heroic challenge of overcoming his own limits and awakening his friends from their winter sleep, but René only manages to win our sympathy, and Laura and René end up, at best, in a union of ennui.