How Long Is “While You Were Sleeping”?

This offbeat romantic comedy has some rather dark underpinnings that add, rather than detract from the fun. It is the story of Lucy, an extremely lonely young woman who works as a toll-taker for the Chicago Transit Authority. She is secretly in love with a handsome stranger in a camel-hair coat who passes by her every day but never even says hello to her. Just before Christmas, she is at work when she sees her "love" pushed, mugged and shoved off the train platform. Without hesitation she leaps down to pull the unconscious fellow out of the path of a speeding train. Later in the hospital, a series of complex misunderstandings occur and the woman is mistaken for the man's fiancee. As he is deeply comatose, Lucy goes along with it, much to the delight of the man's loud, dysfunctional family. Lucy has no real family, and she is happy to be a part of his strange brood. To make sure she stays, she decides to take certain liberties with her sleeping husband-to-be. Meanwhile, she and the patient's brother find themselves drawn to each other.