Dir.
Michel Gondry, France/Italy, 2006, 106 mins
Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg
Review by Carol Allen
Award-winning music video maker Michel Gondry
is on the same surreal wavelength as writer Charlie Kaufman.
He made his first feature film, when he and Kaufman worked
together on Human Nature in 2001, which sunk without trace
to video. They then reunited for the successful and deliciously
original Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind three years
later.
The Science of Sleep, Gondry's first feature film as writer
as well as director, is shot partly in French, partly English
with some Spanish. Gondry returns to his native Paris, indeed
to his own youth, filming it in the same building, where
he himself had a boring job in a calendar company as a young
man. In the film he gives the same boring job to protagonist
Stephane (Garcia Bernal), a job which fails to use Stephane's
artistic talents.
However, it's not as if Stephane spends
that much time in the real world. The world he creates
in his dreams while sleeping is much more real to him.
In that world he is the host of "Stephane TV", where he expounds his views
on the "science of sleep" on a brightly coloured,
picturebook set in front of cardboard cameras.
Arriving in Paris from Mexico to live with his mother (Miou
Miou), who finds him the aforesaid boring job, Stephane falls
for Stephanie (Gainsbourg), a girl in a neighbouring apartment,
when her piano falls on him. While somewhat unusual and creative
herself and attracted to Stephane, Stephanie is somewhat
alarmed by his shaky grasp on reality, particularly when
he tries to draw her into his dream world. And that's about
all you need to know about the story.
This film is best enjoyed if you just
sit back and enjoy this surreal, imaginative and colourful
trip through the mind and feelings of its charming, infuriating
and childlike hero – a character who, one suspects,
shares a lot of qualities with his creator. While Gondry
is not as witty and inventive a writer as Kaufman, his
rich visual imagination and technique draw you in to the
movie and carry you along with the sheer originality of
the ride and the experience of literally being part of
someone else's dream.
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