The Science of Sleep

At face value this movie looked promising as it is Michel Gondry’s first non-documentary film after 2004's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The writer/director applies his highly inventive cinematic vision to The Science of Sleep. The Science of Sleep, or La Science des rêves (literally The Science of Dreams), is a 2006 French film starring Gael García Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Miou-Miou and Alain Chabat. After Gondy's previous outing with Eternal Sunshine this promised a similar foray into the rich world of European Magic Realism and features the wonderful Charlotte Gainsbourg, the daughter of Gallic crooner Serge Gainsbourg and British singer/actress Jane Birkin. Further positives were the packaging which said it had been entered for the Sundance, Berlin and Seattle festivals but the fact it didn’t win any prizes should have caused concern!

Following the death of his father in Mexico, Stéphane Miroux, a shy insecure young man, agrees to come to Paris to draw closer to his widowed mother Christine. He lands a boring job at a calendar-making firm and falls in love with his charming neighbor Stéphanie. But conquering her is no bed of roses for the young man and the only solution he finds to put up with the difficulties he is going through is escape into a dream world...

Largely set in the very active subconscious mind of Stephane (Gael Garcia Bernal), the movie bounces back and forth between his vivid dreams and mundane real life, which involves living in a Parisian apartment owned by his mother (Miou-Miou) and working at an office with a strange crew of characters, including the crass Guy (Alain Chabat). When Stephane meets Stephanie, a shy neighbor from next door (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg), the two form an unusual friendship, one that may or may not lead to romance. Even more than Eternal Sunshine, The Science of Sleep is marked by Gondry's whimsical-yet-melancholy aesthetic (honed working on videos by Bjork, the White Stripes, and others), which makes heavy use of stop-motion animation and other playful visual tricks. While the former film was rooted in its American setting (Long Island, NY), Sleep is a thoroughly European affair steeped in its French setting, with the eccentric Stephane (a transplant from Mexico) alternating between speaking (and even dreaming) in English, French, and Spanish. Although its occasionally over-the-top quirkiness may baffle some viewers.


Like Eternal Sunshine, Science of Sleep is, at its centre, a simple love story between a confident woman and a shy, awkward man. And where Sunshine used the tool of memory erasure to unspool the tangle of a dying relationship, Science jiggers around in the dreams of lovelorn Stephane (Bernal) to chronicle the birth of one. The dream sequences, which essentially become the film as the line between Stephane’s real and imagined life blurs the more his feelings deepen, are both a great strength and a weakness. When they work they are hilarious, weirdly insightful and brilliantly barking — witness a jam session with the band dressed in animal costumes, or a getaway in a cardboard car — but every so often a clunky one meanders in aimlessly and sends the film blearily toddling its way into experimental artsy-fartsiness.

However the more the movie went on the more there was a feeling the director was being self indulgent and forgetting his audience in a contrived plot which relied on visual cleverness. The film is flawed, for a start the main character was totally irritating and hard to identify with. The story was childish and strained credibility with the viewer. The female lead, even with the wonderful Charlotte, was boring. The visuals were ugly paper-mache and added to the lack of audience identification. Sometimes artists take their visions too far and Gondry has done this here no doubt on the back of the commercial success of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It happens for everyone and I'm sure Gondry is a talented guy, and will impress me again, but this was too much to take.


It suffers occasionally from self-consciousness and over-indulgence in its own oddity, but Gondry’s grasp of emotion and visuals is enchanting. Even if he seems several sandwiches short of a picnic! When the weird kicks in: from the TV studio (in his head, with egg cartons), to massive-hand fights (see above), moveable buildings and people turning into wool, the visual invention is stunning. There just doesn’t seem to be much point to it.

I’m afraid for all its promise in script, direction and cast this is one to watch for curiosity and occasional flashes of brilliance. For all its promise it forgets the first rule of film making, “Always bring the audience with you!” It’s whimsical to the point of maddening. Bernal does his best, but there’s only so much fawning any man can get away with.