The Sleeping Dictionary is a film directed and written by Guy Jenkin. It speaks of a young English officer, John Truscott who is sent to Sarawak, a British colony in 1936 to work with the Iban people. Once there. he is paired up with Selima, a ‘Sleeping Dictionary’ who is to teach him the local language and t0 share his bed — Wikipedia says that the ‘movie contains some historical inaccuracies and doesn’t show the Iban in the true light, although… it was also true that Iban maidens as “sleeping dictionaries” did exist, and to this day, there are in fact many prominent Eurasians in local Malaysian society who are living proof of that practice’. The problem in this case, however, is that the officer winds up falling in love with Selima. The story focusses on how they are separated for a while and are then reunited.
The film is a bit irksome at times but some of the characters in it and the way in which they insisted on not knowing things which they evidently did know about intrigued me:
- Selima, the unacknowleged daughter who knew who her father was and still claimed to believe that he was dead although they did acknowledge each othe when he said goodbye to her and gave her a gun to protect herself.
- Aggie who asked John about his sleeping arrangements but who claimed not to have heard of sleeping dictionaries later on.
- Cecil who often chose to be blind but said that she didn’t want her sister hurt when it came to the crunch.
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