The Science of Sleep (2006)
Directed by Michel Gondry
A man entranced by his dreams and imagination is lovestruck with a French woman and feels he can show her his world.
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There are also aspects of Science that are reminiscent of Polanski's The Tenant (1976), but in what at least appears to be a more benign guise.
In mood it kept reminding me of Roman Polanski's 1972 re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland as a sex romp, What? (aka: Diary of Forbidden Dreams).
Gondry, who even takes a wee rim shot at Bushian “age of terror” trauma, briskly echoes some of the fabled effronteries of the French New Wave's “Pierrot Le Fou,” “Jules et Jim” and “Zazie dans le Metro.”
Gondry, who even takes a wee rim shot at Bushian “age of terror” trauma, briskly echoes some of the fabled effronteries of the French New Wave's “Pierrot Le Fou,” “Jules et Jim” and “Zazie dans le Metro.”
Even more than Flyboys, though, this resembles An Officer and a Gentleman, right down to the scene where our handsome hero bursts into his girlfriend's place of employment to declare his everlasting love (sign of the times: Instead of the Oscar-winning "Up Where We Belong," the soundtrack swells with a treacly Bryan Adams tune).
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Stéphanie, an artistic type just like Stéphane, is embarrassed by the overt matchmaking of her friend Zoé (Emma de Caunes, "Ma mère"), but clearly intrigued, and, living across the hall from her landlady, Stéphane's mother (Miou-Miou, "Dry Cleaning"), she has plenty of opportunity to run into him.
Kaufman had earned his notoriety by penning Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, but to attribute the brilliance of Eternal Sunshine mostly to him struck me as unfair, since Gondry himself is a unique talent and visualist.
Kaufman, the rug-pulling screenwriter of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, provided the literate and intricately plotted script, but the achingly beautiful images—the fence that disappeared, post by post, as the two lovers ran alongside it, or the house that crumbled around them as their shared history rushed toward oblivion—came from French director Michel Gondry, best known for making music videos for the likes of Beck, Björk, and the White Stripes.
Stephane is a wide-eyed dreamer and, like Rupert Pupkin in “The King of Comedy” (spark for the Scorsese mention in this film?), an imaginative narcissist and a gem of arrested development.
Si le cinéaste français compta sur le toujours génial Charlie Kaufman pour l’écriture de ses deux premiers longs-métrages de fiction, le hasardeux Human Nature et le chef-d’œuvre Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Gondry fit cette fois-ci cavalier seul et signa à la fois le scénario et la réalisation de ce projet ambitieux, mais pas impossible.
Those with no patience for the trippy whimsy of Gondry's previous films ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," written by Charlie Kaufman, and "Human Nature") will likely find "Sleep" a frustrating experience; those willing to ride the waves of its strangeness will find many rewards.
Michel Gondry is known for music videos and movies such as "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "Human Nature," both scripted by Charlie Kaufman.
The French filmmaker and former director of musical videos, Michel Gondry ("Human Nature''), comes up with a similar themed wacky and tacky fantasy film followup to "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'' but for being a low budget work, without star power and without the esoteric writing services of Charles Kaufman, as Gondry goes solo for the first time as a screenwriter.
It's Gondry's third film (after Human Nature and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ) and his first without screenwriter Charlie Kaufman.
Writer/director Michel Gondry ("Human Nature") has taken a page from scripter Charlie Kaufman's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and his own unique visual sense to serve up a lighter, fluffier companion piece.
The French filmmaker and former director of musical videos, Michel Gondry ("Human Nature''), comes up with a similar themed wacky and tacky fantasy film followup to "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'' but for being a low budget work, without star power and without the esoteric writing services of Charles Kaufman, as Gondry goes solo for the first time as a screenwriter.
It's unlikely that anyone's going to think of Gondry as a traditionalist, but even his loyal stateside fan base, which grew by orders of magnitude on the success of his two previous films, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Dave Chappelle's Block Party, may find themselves growing restless if not downright annoyed by what is essentially Gondry's untrammeled romantic imagination.
Gondry, the director of numerous music videos and " Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ," creates those last two things in "The Science of Sleep," the hand-crafted fantasy he's written and directed about a little boy in the body of a small young man who confuses waking, sleeping and dreaming.
Who better to make an imaginative, playful movie about dreams than Michel Gondry, whose "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" captured the inner workings of the human mind in rich, whimsical detail.
"The Science of Sleep," Gondry's third feature, follows the under-loved "Human Nature" and the much more successful, melancholy and poignant "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."
Navel-gazing director Michel Gondry ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind") wears his developmentally arrested heart on his sleeve, on his pants, and on his forehead in the most self-indulgent movie of 2006.
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Instead of a plot, it has a lovely ambient state of love and longing; in place of the "Pride and Prejudice" progression from mutual misunderstanding to marriage, it offers an overly self-conscious young couple, perennially and precariously poised between yes and no.
Gondry appears to have designed "The Science of Sleep" as an elaboration on a short film, "La Lettre" ("The Letter"), which available on his DVD collection.