Science of Sleep
After a long string of watching DVDs, I finally made my way to the theater to catch director Michel Gondry’s Science of Sleep, starring Garcia Bernal and Charlotte Gainsbourg. It recently hit the art house scene here, and after being hyped as the new Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I felt as if I needed to see this film. Here’s the result:
The story follows a man returning to France to live in his mother’s apartment building. He is set up for a type placement job for a calendar company. Though Stephane (Bernal) is a creative individual, he takes the mundane job to support himself. He meets a young woman who lives directly across the hall from him named Stephanie. He falls in love, and tries all that he can think of to convince her to love him. The trick is, Stephane is not the most mentally stable person out there. His dream world begins to bleed into reality, as Stephane loses control of his actions while asleep. He begins to sleepwalk during the night, and daydream throughout the day. Stephane’s childish mind takes him on a constant trip up and down the thralls of relationship.
Pair this with the visual mind of Michel Gondry, and you’ve got an interesting idea. The story is separated into two worlds: that of reality, and that of a TV show within Stephane’s mind. The TV personality acts as the consciousness that drives Stephane’s actions. Gondry tries to make these two worlds bleed together with stop animation, and diverse set design. And to a point, it does work. The problem though, is that the film is trying too much to be like its previous success, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In that film, viewers were exposed to a style of film making not yet seen by general audiences. Gondry’s quirky worlds with dream-like sequences carried us off into the realm of the unconscious. Yet, here we have a story that focuses on just that, and it seems to fall short.
As said, the visuals were enough to entertain, but not enough to take me all the way. At times, I felt as if I were watching the crazy stop animation not because it helped the story, but because it was simple to do, and worked where they placed it. Along those lines, the performance by the lead, Garcia Bernal, was well executed but seemed out of place. Bernal is a talented actor, and has fit perfectly into roles such as Ernesto Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries. But when it comes to a quirky love story, I felt as if he just wasn’t the right person for the job. That’s not to say that he did a poor job with the role, character, and dialogue; it just seemed to me that someone a little less composed, someone a little less confident would have come off a bit stronger in this role.
It’s worth the watch, but don’t walk in expecting it to be the next Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind. The writing is clever and interesting. The dream sequences alone are enough to bring a smile to your face. What would you do if you could control your dreams? And further, what would you do if they started to control you? How far would you go to convince someone they loved you? All these and more, on Stephane TV.
6.75 of 10.
The story follows a man returning to France to live in his mother’s apartment building. He is set up for a type placement job for a calendar company. Though Stephane (Bernal) is a creative individual, he takes the mundane job to support himself. He meets a young woman who lives directly across the hall from him named Stephanie. He falls in love, and tries all that he can think of to convince her to love him. The trick is, Stephane is not the most mentally stable person out there. His dream world begins to bleed into reality, as Stephane loses control of his actions while asleep. He begins to sleepwalk during the night, and daydream throughout the day. Stephane’s childish mind takes him on a constant trip up and down the thralls of relationship.
Pair this with the visual mind of Michel Gondry, and you’ve got an interesting idea. The story is separated into two worlds: that of reality, and that of a TV show within Stephane’s mind. The TV personality acts as the consciousness that drives Stephane’s actions. Gondry tries to make these two worlds bleed together with stop animation, and diverse set design. And to a point, it does work. The problem though, is that the film is trying too much to be like its previous success, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In that film, viewers were exposed to a style of film making not yet seen by general audiences. Gondry’s quirky worlds with dream-like sequences carried us off into the realm of the unconscious. Yet, here we have a story that focuses on just that, and it seems to fall short.
As said, the visuals were enough to entertain, but not enough to take me all the way. At times, I felt as if I were watching the crazy stop animation not because it helped the story, but because it was simple to do, and worked where they placed it. Along those lines, the performance by the lead, Garcia Bernal, was well executed but seemed out of place. Bernal is a talented actor, and has fit perfectly into roles such as Ernesto Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries. But when it comes to a quirky love story, I felt as if he just wasn’t the right person for the job. That’s not to say that he did a poor job with the role, character, and dialogue; it just seemed to me that someone a little less composed, someone a little less confident would have come off a bit stronger in this role.
It’s worth the watch, but don’t walk in expecting it to be the next Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind. The writing is clever and interesting. The dream sequences alone are enough to bring a smile to your face. What would you do if you could control your dreams? And further, what would you do if they started to control you? How far would you go to convince someone they loved you? All these and more, on Stephane TV.
6.75 of 10.
posted by Admin at 9:06 AM
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