Science of Sleep was one of those movies where I entered the cinema feeling grumpy and sceptical, determined not to enjoy it after having had an argument with my girlfriend, but which charmed me from the first frame.
Michel Gondry isn’t a director whose films I would go out of my way to see —
Human Nature was dull, Eternal Sunshine ropey — so that this was so inventive and true was a surprise. Of course, it could be that I don’t like Charlie Kaufman, who wrote the script for the other films but not this one.
I suspect the reception of the film depends largely upon the nature of your dreams. Some people’s dreams are directed like David Lynch, others like they’re Michaelangelo Antonioni. Mine are more like Gondry’s Science of Sleep — with flight a swimming motion, stardom a given, and frustration everywhere.
The film presents a couple of months in the life of Stephane (Gael Garcia Bernal), an illustrator from Mexico who has come to Paris for work and to be near his Mother. Stephane’s difficulty in separating his dreams from reality drives the plot and although there is no real narrative, the story presented is very engaging. Does there need to be a purpose? Are dreams less satisfying because they don’t mean anything or have any purpose. Do we have to assign Freudian meanings in order to validate them? I think not. And the same applies to film.
The Science of Sleep is one of the few films where gentle whimsy and the struggle against bureaucratic order doesn’t mean tedium.
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