The Science of Sleep
Directed by Michel Gondry
Reviewed by Michelle GroeneYou know how even the most
vivid and beautiful dream comes across as trite and insane when you try to
describe it to another person? No one likes a story that begins with, “So
I had this dream last night…” because as interesting as it may
have seemed while you were having the dream, it almost never feels that way
to the person you’re recreating it for. Like dreams, which are
highly personal and symbolic, so is Michel Gondry’s film The Science
of Sleep, so much so in fact that it almost feels pointless to try to
recreate the film’s beauty here, because my interpretation would be lost
on another.
Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)
has created a lush dreamscape for the viewer, and his style here
is more reminiscent of his music videos than any film he’s
directed. Stop-motion photography, exaggerated, over-sized
props and psychedelic underwater visual effects are just a few
examples of techniques Gondry employs to bring this film to life,
and to blur the distinction between dreams and reality. It’s
surreal, cerebral and utterly jaw-dropping to be a part of this
visual experience, which will feel significant in a million different
ways for a million different people.
The story itself is not as significant; what we’re given
to work with is really a bare-bones structure in order to help
make the distinction when the waking and dream lives collide. Gael
Garcia Bernal is Stephane, a childishly imaginative inventor who
returns to Paris from Mexico to be with his mother after his father
dies. Sleeping in his childhood bed and taking a job that
does little to stimulate his creative mind – a typesetter
for a calendar company – Stephane quickly retreats to his
more interesting dream world, where he is the host of “Stephane
TV.” Here we’re given more insight into Stephane’s
character, we learn about his relationship with his parents and
what he really thinks about his crazy co-workers.
And then he meets his female namesake and next-door neighbor,
Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Not immediately smitten
with her, he soon falls for her upon the realization that she possesses
the same wide-eyed childhood wonderment he does. The two
play-act and create cartoonish stories; he shares his 3-D and time
travel inventions with her. Stephane’s dreams start
to feel more desperate at this point – he wants Stephanie
to appear in them, so that he can express the way he feels, which
he cannot do in real life. Eventually she does show up in
the dreams, but it might not be exactly the outcome that Stephane
is hoping for.
Given that the film is so subjective and based on interpretative
fantasy, Bernal, Gainsbourg and all the supporting actors must
be given credit for what they’ve done with what little they’ve
been given to work with. In fact, they make everything feel
so credible that suspending your disbelief is easy, which is difficult
for a film that feels like little more than a hallucination. In
short, The Science of Sleep is like a strange but good
dream that you never want to wake up from.
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