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MovieMail's Review
The Science of Sleep is the most captivating film in years. From the beautiful psychedelic splash-painting credits to the gentle, touching finale, the film is a delight. The musical soundtrack, a mix of styles that sneaks up on you from all angles, is sublime.
The film tells the story of a young Mexican-French inventor Stephane who negotiates the ‘real world’ of Paris and his ‘dream lab’- a clapped-out TV studio- with equal discomfort and it is never made clear which is which. Stephane’s world of inverted dreams is rendered using effects old and new, from stop-motion animation (a surrealist favourite) to ‘blue screen’ superimpositions. These are the experiences of the “Parallel Synchronized Randomness” a condition that is both internal and filmic. Stephane tries to enamour Stephanie, the girl next door, by collaborating with her on a child-like fantasy film. But the film is not about ‘special effects’; rather it uses them to service powerful, instinctive ideas.
While the surrealists were the first to recognise the brilliance of film as a tool for representing the unconscious mind, there have since been many debasements of their ideas: avant-garde aesthetics used to sell cigarettes, beer and mobile phones. The pop video is one of the principal source of this illness and Michel Gondry – a French musician turned filmmaker – has made his own contributions to this. His promos made his name yet were limited by the form. Gondry’s features though transcend ‘art for art’s sake’ and in his hands the potentially hideous ‘high concept’ movie becomes magical. The film has its strained ‘weird’ moments (a cardboard car chase; a band playing Lou Reed’s ‘After Hours’ dressed as cats) but its rallying cry- ‘death to organisation!”- is not simply rhetorical. When Stephane pronounces “It’s only a dream- we don’t have to work” subversion is introduced. The Science of Sleep offers a genuinely surprising world as an antidote to contemporary living.
For his first feature since 2004's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, French writer/director Michel Gondry applies his highly inventive cinematic vision to The Science Of Sleep. Largely set in the very active subconscious mind of Stephane (Gael Garcia Bernal), the movie bounces back and forth between his vivid dreams and mundane real life, living in a Parisian apartment owned by his mother (Miou-Miou).
When Stephane meets Stephanie, a shy neighbour from next door (Charlotte Gainsbourg), the two form an unusual friendship, one that may or may not lead to romance.
Even more than Eternal Sunshine, The Science of Sleep is marked by Gondry's whimsical-yet-melancholy aesthetic (honed working on videos by Bjork, the White Stripes, and others), which makes heavy use of stop-motion animation and other playful visual tricks. While the former film was rooted in its American setting (Long Island, NY), Sleep is a thoroughly European affair steeped in its French setting, with the eccentric Stephane (a transplant from Mexico) alternating between speaking (and even dreaming) in English, French, and Spanish. Although its occasionally over-the-top quirkiness may baffle some viewers, Sleep's unpredictable and engagingly odd sense of storytelling is sure to intrigue fans of other indie classics such as Amelia and Punch-Drunk Love.
