‘No One Sleeps’ Deft Thriller Set Against AIDS Backdrop

Jochen Hick’s “No One Sleeps” is a complex, sexy and provocative thriller set in San Francisco that represents the German filmmaker’s most accomplished film to date. Tom Wlaschiha stars as Stefan Hein, a 20-something Berlin medical researcher invited to San Francisco to an AIDS conference where he proposes a controversial theory for the origin of AIDS just as a serial killer starts targeting men who have tested positive for HIV. A production of “Turandot” at the San Francisco Opera is imminent, and its princess, given to having beheaded those suitors who fail to solve three riddles correctly, provides a continuing motif.

As it happens, Hein’s late father attended an AIDS congress in San Francisco in 1989, and Stefan is determined to take his San Francisco visit as an opportunity to investigate his father’s theory that U.S. government researchers injected prisoners with a serum from a sheep virus thus creating HIV. He intends to pursue rumors that an actual list of injected prisoners exists. Combining work and pleasure, Stefan, who is himself gay, heads for the city’s gay sex clubs, which allows for some pretty kinky stuff, a Hick specialty. Along the way Stefan becomes involved with Jeffrey (Jim Thalman), a mercurial cafe waiter who alternately rejects and comes on to Stefan, resulting in a tempestuous on-again, off-again affair.

As the serial killings commence, Stefan meets Louise Tolliver (Irit Levi), a canny, tenacious police investigator who seems more like a college professor than a cop. Her sensitivity and shrewdness prove crucial to Stefan and the unfolding of the case. On its most personal level, the film becomes Stefan’s odyssey of self-discovery.

Hick’s plot becomes convoluted to the point of murkiness, but “No One Sleeps” is nevertheless effective in suggesting just how treacherous and exploitative the political implications of dealing with AIDS in all of its aspects can be. Too many of the many supporting players are self-consciously amateurish, but the impact of Wlaschiha, Thalman and especially the distinctive and commanding Levi more than compensate. “No One Sleeps” is an adroit, ambitious, richly detailed and keenly observant piece of filmmaking by the director of the haunting Rio drama “Via Appia” (1990) and two racy documentaries, “Menmaniacs” (1985) and “Sex Life in L.A.” (1998).

*

Unrated. Times guidelines: language, drugs, sex, violence; decidedly adult fare.

‘No One Sleeps’

Tom Wlaschiha: Stefan Hein

Irit Levi: Louise Tolliver

Jim Thalman: Jeffrey Russo

Kalene Parker: Maureen Finley

A Jour de Fete Films release. Writer-director producer Jochen Hick. Cinematographers Thomas M. Harting, Michael Maley. Music James Hardway. Main music theme from Puccini’s “Turandot.” Art director and set designer Craig Copher and Bernard Homann. Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes.

At selected theaters.