The Science of Sleep
Written and directed by Michel Gondry
Warner Independent
2006
Rating:


The whimsical, heartbreaking journey into the mind of Joel in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless" requires an artificial catalyst, a low-fi device that allows a doctor to erase his memory. No such intercessor is needed for the head trip of "The Science of Sleep," director Michel Gondry's narrative follow-up to his Academy Award-winning "Eternal Sunshine". In "The Science of Sleep," Stéphane (movingly played by Gael García Bernal) crosses between the realms of dream and fantasy at will (and sometimes against it) to escape the doldrums of everyday life and win over the girl of his dreams.

Stéphane returns home from Mexico to Paris to be with his mother (Miou-Miou), who lives next door to Zoé (Emma de Caunes) and Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Zoé is initially the object of Stéphane's affection and he futilely attempts, in dreams and waking life, to obtain her phone number.

As her name implies, Stéphanie is Stéphane's real match and Stéphanie at least recognizes a fellow fantasist even if Stéphane does not. Stéphanie befriends Stéphane and together they create a unique, imaginary world of Rube Goldberg inventions, a cellophane sea, broken pianos that spit out cotton clouds and a machine that sends them mere seconds into the future and back in the past. But even Stéphanie has her limits and Stéphane is placed in danger of losing her if he can't at least occasionally curb his capriciousness.

Gondry uses his plot as a reason to indulge in his most Oneiric impulses, recalling the visual hallmarks he employed in such visually imaginative music videos as The White Stripes' "Fell in Love with a Girl", The Chemical Brothers' "Star Guitar," Bjork's "Human Behavior," Daft Punk's "Around the World" and especially the waking dream of The Chemical Brothers' "Let Forever Be" and the Foo Fighter's "Everlong", which has its over-sized hand slap fight re-appropriated here. The genius of Gondry's flights of fancy has always been in its homespun qualities. Having no use for CGI, Gondry prefers to use rough stop-motion animation, cardboard, obvious green screen work, cheap animal costumes and anything that can be found in an arts and crafts store.

This idiosyncratically unsophisticated quality is precisely what makes "The Science of Sleep" and the rest of Gondry's surreal oeuvre so endearingly humanistic. Gondry doesn't utilize his visual marvels merely to dazzle the eye: he uses them to close the chasm between the imagination and the heart.

Posted Saturday, January 20, 2007

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