Only a few names in contemporary cinema have me waiting in line on opening day. Michel Gondry was one of those names, until I saw
his latest film, La Science des R?ves (The Science of Sleep). I was initially excited about its release, but I left the theater utterly disappointed.
I had every right to be excited, judging from Gondry’s 2004 feature film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It was a nearly perfect blend of beauty, melancholy, bleak comedy, and outright pain. Sunshine has lines and spectacular visions still embedded in my memory. I expected the director to continue to delight and astound
audiences. After sitting through The Science of Sleep, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Sleep was amateur compared to Gondry’s previous movie. They do share themes and ideas: both are spent inside the protagonist’s head, cluttered with deep desires and bizarre twists of reality. However, where Sunshine fully delivers with a flawless screenplay (by Charlie Kaufman), a mesmerizing display of visual beauty, and a cast that comes off as true and empathetic,
Sleep is a nightmare of jumbled ideas, poor writing, and infantile visions of reality. When backed by a good writer, Gondry has the creativity to augment a film, but now, left to his own devices, he has failed.
Gondry tries to tell a love story between two apartment neighbors with very similar names, St?phane (Bernal) and St?phanie (Gainsbourg). St?phane is a full time daydreamer and has difficulty discerning imagination from reality. This allows the audience full passage into his thoughts and desires. Unfortunately, these inner secrets are not interesting or mature.
The plot has no clear focus or development, apparently edited together using a rusted machete and a glue stick. Scenes vanish and appear, begin and end with no apparent order. St?phane enters his new apartment exactly as it had been left from his childhood, complete with his toys and playful
comforter. What a perfect setting for this film since his character never quite matured from this stage of life, either.
The love between the lead parts resembles a middle school crush, where slaps and insults are bartered as flirts and romance. Gondry shows that this love is based on the similarity of their names and nothing more. The characters desperately interact but never connect on a deep level. This is through no fault of Bernal or Gainsbourg, both make a valiant effort to add some life to this film. Gondry has failed to offer them anything substantial with which to work.
Sleep is nothing more than an excuse for the director to fool around in his funhouse of animation. There is no whimsy or emotion or truth to be found anywhere in this masturbatory experience. While initially the cardboard backdrops, the obvious bluescreen,
and even the amateur animation style have a charming air to them, they quickly become stale and unexciting.
Gondry does what any teenager would do with access to a video camera; he makes silly movies that are more fun for the creator than the viewer, but hold a certain quirky fun for a few minutes. However, Gondry has turned his homemade mini adventure into a feature film for adults. And as the minutes tick on we are left not waiting to see what happens next, but waiting for the end; bored and continually checking our watches. ?