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Seen, Heard, Noted & Quoted
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by rick grant
rickgrant01@comcast.net
B+ Rated R 105 min
A kaleidoscope of surrealistic images characterize this art film, written and directed by Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ). Gael Garcia Bernal (Motorcycle Diaries) stars as an artist, Stephane Miroux–a Mexican living in Paris. Stephane exists on the outer fringe of full-scale schizophrenia. He lives in a dreamworld that is difficult to distinguish from his reality. In fact, Stephane’s dream world crosses over into his creative artistic consciousness.
When Stephane’s mother gets him a job in Paris, Stephane is shocked to learn it’s a mundane position in a girlie calendar company, where he is relegated to pasting-up the lettering for the calendar. Stephane shows his boss his artistic idea for the calendar using his art work, which depicts shocking images of various disasters. His boss dismisses his art as depressing and not suited for calendars. Shattered and discouraged, Stephane retreats to his dream world where he controls his own destiny.
Although his work-a-day world is not what he imagined, he meets the girl next door, Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and falls in love with her. But he is so strange and his conversation is so disconnected, at first, he alienates Stephanie. However, after a few more encounters, Stephanie is intrigued by this eccentric artist. Nonetheless, Stephanie has a hard time communicating with Stephane, who says inappropriate things out of the blue, which freaks her out.
Bernal masterfully portrays Stephane’s child-like persona and odd but enthusiastic behavior. Ultimately, Stephane’s charming whimsy captivates Stephanie, who loves his imaginative inventions that only work is his dream world, like his time machine and electric razor creature. Stephanie is also an artist. She crafts original stuffed toys, which Stephane robotizes with motors. In many ways, like their names, Stephane and Stephanie have a lot in common–a tendency to dwell in a special ethereal realm apart from the consensus reality.
Gondry created a metaphysical world in which to place his characters and only asks his audience to keep an open mind. If anyone could relate to Stephane’s surrealistic consciousness, it’s Stephanie. But she is more pragmatic than Stephane, who seems too emotionally sensitive to pull off a long term relationship with Stephanie. He walks that fine line between sanity and madness–yet, his creative energy saves him from himself and keeps him loosely connected to Stephanie.
Charlotte Gainsbourg’s keenly insightful portrayal of Stephanie compliments Bernal’s joyful trips into fancy and imagination as Stephane, who grows on the viewer after his richly developed dream world enhances his charm. The film is interspersed with some delightful animations which pop up when you least expect them.
The characters speak French and English with Bernal mixing Spanish with his French and English, which is sometimes confusing, but overall, adds an international overview to the film. It’s doubtful that Stephane and Stephanie could have an emotionally satisfying relationship. His bizarre behavior gives Stephanie cause for concern and puts a wall between her real affection for him and her acting on this feeling.
Many artists and writers creatively exist in their altered states of consciousness when they paint or write. But Stephane lives in this world 24/7. For him it’s a line he crosses daily, making working a regular job extremely hard for him. His mind is off on creative tangents while he is supposed to being productive and finishing his work. People like this need caretakers and friends who understand them and protect them from the outside world. Stephane’s stunning art comes from that world, which gives him his images and ideas.
Indeed, Stephanie could play that role if she was willing to love Stephane, unconditionally-- truly understanding the unique way his mind worked. But can she overcome her doubts and have enough patience and selflessness to play Stephane’s lover and protector? This is the fundamental question Gondry asks in his screenplay. Since Stephane hovers on the brink of schizophrenia and could crossover at any time, Stephanie would have to understand that she could lose him to this insidious mental illness.
In every connotation of the term, “art film,” this movie is thought provoking and will please devotees of this esoteric genre of cinema. Hopefully, other mainstream moviegoers will take a chance and see it.
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Can it be a surprise that the quirky writer/director Michel Gondry of The Science of Sleep got his start filming Björk music videos? Like Spike Lee and David Fincher, he parlayed his music video experience as a director into work on feature films as a director. His first film, Human Nature got largely tepid reviews in 2001, but his second try at feature length directing was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which was critically acclaimed. The script worked well with Gondry’s cinematic tricks and ability to play with the viewer’s perceptions. The Science of Sleep is first film that Gondry both wrote and directed. When asked what took him so long to present a film that came purely from his own vision of the world Gondry replied that he’d only just gotten the confidence but that “as I went along and did more work, I realized I had things to say and wanted to go deeper into expressing my own voice. I’d always been expressing my voice alongside somebody else’s, and felt the need to put more of myself out there…One of the reasons I really wanted to do The Science of Sleep was not to have to question my ideas on an intellectual level. When I work with other people, I have to use words. It’s more limiting to the process to have to convey my ideas that way. If you want to create something, hoping it will go beyond yourself, you can’t question every step of the process. It may seem contradictory, but the fact that I’m the only one to make the decisions allows me to have less control of things. I want my instinct to be more in control and my intellect to be less in control, allowing me to have ideas, images, and concepts without having to justify why.”
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