Directed by: Michel Gondry
Writer: Michel Gondry
Rated: R (sexual content, nudity, profanity)
Main Cast:
Gael Garcia Bernal ... Stéphane Miroux
Charlotte Gainsbourg ... Stéphanie
Alain Chabat ... Guy
Miou-Miou ... Christine Miroux
Emma de Caunes ... Zoé
I procrastinated on watching this movie for a long time, and now I wish I hadn't. It's one of those movies that was so creative that I couldn't help but be riveted by it, but now that it's over it's hard to describe why.
The main gist of the plot is that Stéphane (Bernal) has returned from Mexico to the building his mother (Miou-Miou) owns in France after the death of his father. He soon meets Stéphanie (Gainsbourg), the new tenant living in the apartment next to his.
What you would expect to follow is the typical romance between the foreign loner and the neighbor, both artists in their own right. The romance is there - or is it? - but the real focus of this film is on the relationship between subconscious and consciousness. Dreams and reality. We get the sense that the parallels between Stéphane's dream world and reality are more prominent than that of the average person. He jumps in and out of the two so erratically that half of the time even he doesn't know whether he's dreaming or awake, and neither do we. Even when a caption on screen tells us that two months have passed and we are taken to a party celebrating the success of Stéphane's calendar, has that time really passed? Is the time passing also a dream? Have he and Stéphanie started a romance, or has it simply been in Stéphane's mind?
To try to make sense of it all doesn't seem to do the film justice. The dream sequences are a joy to behold, so frenetic and colorful that you can't help but be drawn to them. Despite not ever being certain what was going on, I was never bored by the movie. Bernal was fantastic, ranging from the exuberance of his dream state to the quiet mumblings of the awkward, withdrawn Stéphane. And Gainsbourg, as his parallel, brought a quiet stability to the cyclone of impressions and emotions depicted herein.
The contrast between conscious and subconscious is more successfully bridged in films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But the perplexing nature of The Science of Sleep doesn't make it a failure. Like dreams themselves, it fascinates as it confuses. Making sense of the images it provides doesn't seem to be the point. It's an odd film, but it's satisfying in an inexplicable way.
Final Rating: B+
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