Mike Birbiglia, Danny Borbon, and Amanda Perez. (Adam Beckman/IFC Films)

The title Sleepwalk with Me riffs on a lothario’s come on. But instead of a conventional seduction, comedian-turned-playwright-turned-director Mike Birbiglia bats his eyes at the viewer with an autobiographical fiction that doesn’t always show his alter ego in a flattering light.

Birbiglia plays Mike Pandamiglio, a struggling, awkward comic who tends bar at a comedy club in the hopes of landing a spot on stage. Performance anxiety is a given in any entertainer’s repertoire, but the stand-up comic, especially of the self-effacing variety, has it particularly rough: how to balance confidence with a mild-mannered personality, self-doubt with belief in your work, the privacy of your loved ones with the thrill of an audience that laughs when you joke about your personal life.

The film begins with Birbiglia behind the wheel, a position he takes frequently in the movie, especially when his career begins to take off. The comedian/director regularly addresses the camera as he takes the viewer along on his personal journey. Mike has a trusting and supportive girlfriend in Abby (Lauren Ambrose), and she seems to be the only person who finds his jokes funny. Early in the film, his material isn’t much more than an observation that Cookie Monster is a throat-less beast with an eating disorder. It’s mildly amusing, but you can understand how his comic ship has not yet sailed. One night at the club he meets a second rate booking agent (Sondra James) and ends up so desperate for gigs that he take anything. As the gigs keep coming, they feed imbalance and exhaustion and an already compromised sleep problem.

Lauren Ambrose and Mike Birbiglia (Adam Beckman/IFC Films)

Under pressure from his family and his relationship, he begins to act out his dreams as he sleeps, beginning mildly enough as he mistakes a laundry hamper for a jackal, moving on to a stumble as he accepts the gold medal for dust busting. But as he presses on in his exhausting career, he finds his voice but loses sleep, and brings personal relationship details into his act. It’s the first but not the last violation of his relationship, as we learn in an episode which he introduces by turning to the camera and trying to remind the viewer, “Remember, you’re on my side.” It’s unclear how much his career arc really did involve running away from responsibility and life. Sleepwalking becomes a metaphor for the way he escapes into his muse but away from reality. Sleepwalk with Me is in some ways a variation on the finding your voice arc of which I am fond, but unlike most tales of developing personal vision or growing up, there is no celebratory ending to justify his behavior. Life doesn’t offer the pat resolutions of art, and neither does Birbiglia’s film.

With the doting girlfriend, the dotty mother (Carol Kane), and the hard-nosed father (James Rebhorn), Sleepwalk with Me could have been like a lot of other comedies. But a bit part goes to a figure who hints at the unique tone here: singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III. Wainwright’s 1971 song, “Motel blues” doesn’t appear in the movie, but it’s felt as Mike’s life moves from that of a unsettled bartender without a career to a man with a growing career but an unsettled, peripatetic life of hotels and one night stands. How many other awkward comedies blend humor with a descent into the hell of rootless alienation?

Viral marketing has helped the movie in the form of a YouTube clip in which Joss Whedon sets up a faux David and Goliath rivalry pretending to boycott the little movie. Birbiglia and co-producer Ira Glass countered with a promise to top The Avengers‘ multi-billion dollar box office haul. In its modest way, Sleepwalk with Me is more eventful than any blockbuster, and it doesn’t need 3D glasses to reach out to audiences. It uses a flawed but engaging personality to tell an awkward rake’s progress.

Co-writer and producer Ira Glass (“This American Life”) will appear in person at the E Street Cinema on Sunday, September 2 for Q&As after the 5:45 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. shows; and on Monday, September 3 for Q&As after the 1:15 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. shows.
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Sleepwalk with Me

Directed by Mike Birbiglia and Seth Barrish (co-director)
Written by Mike Birbiglia, Joe Birbiglia, Ira Glass and Seth Barrish.
With Mike Birbiglia, Lauren Ambrose, Carol Kane, James Rebhorn.
Running time 90 minutes.
Not rated: contains mild violence, adult situations, and stand-up comedy.
Opens today at Landmark E Street Cinema.