The Science of Sleep

One of my most recent DVD purchases. The title appealed, obviously, because of my current insomniac troubles. And the trailer - which I'd seen during a trip back to the UK last summer - looked intriguing. And I really liked director Michel Gondry's previous film, 'Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind'.

Big disappointment! It does look for all the world like an attempt repeat the success of 'Sunshine' by focusing on similar dreamscapes (though mostly with a rather more cutesy, 'Amelie'-ish feel to them).... but without the benefit of a razor-sharp Charlie Kaufman script.

This film is an intriguing concept that goes nowhere, a plotless mess that completely wastes its very likable and sexy leads, Gael Garcia Bernal and Charlotte Gainsbourg (what is it about Charlotte Gainsbourg? She's not at all conventionally pretty - but damn, she's got poise, intelligence, something.... sexy as hell!). I suspect it's rarely a good idea to let film-makers direct their own scripts: too much ego, not enough self-criticism.

Yes, the fantasy scenes are nicely rendered - but there's no point to them. There's no characterisation, and the story doesn't go anywhere. In fact, it abruptly peters out, with no real resolution at all - giving the impression that Gondry got tired of the project (or ran out of money?) and left it "unfinished".

Bernal is a young commercial artist who has trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality, his dreams from his waking life. This makes his misfiring romance with his feisty next-door neighbour somewhat complicated. A reasonable enough premise; not just your run-of-the-mill rom-com. Unfortunately, however, Bernal's character soon emerges as merely an asinine man-child, and completely dysfunctional in society - he's so unhinged, in fact, that he starts to alienate your sympathy, despite the glowering charm of Bernal himself.

I think also that the film takes the confusion of fantasy and reality too far. At first the fantasy sequences appear to be intended as dreams; but soon we find that this dream-reality presentation (Bernal picturing himself as a TV presenter in a child's cardboard mock-up of a studio; observing - and attempting to control - events from this oddly detached perspective) is being used to represent his subconscious mind while he's awake; then he finds that he has apparently been acting out his dreams while sleepwalking; and then his 'reality' starts to take on an increasingly jumbled and fantastical character, so you wonder how much of this is just happening in his head also. I think you need to have some clearer demarcations between the two worlds, at least at first, if you are to provoke any worthwhile reflections on the interrelation between them.

When almost the entire film is unclear about the boundary between fantasy and reality, it just becomes irritating. I was surprised at the strength of the antipathy this provoked in me; but I have rarely been so bored while watching a film, so eager for it to end.

I think Terry Gilliam is for me still the best renderer of dream-like imagery in films. I adore his 'Brazil' - which has a broadly similar underlying concept. But in that film the dream sequences are clearly discrete from 'reality' for most of the film (and use relevant symbolism to advance the plot); only in the latter sections of the film do dream and fantasy elements start to invade the hero's 'reality'; and it is only with the shocking final revelation (a perspective-flipping trick that actually works..... unlike the obvious and predictable 'surprise ending' in the much over-praised 'The Sixth Sense') that we realise that much of what we've just watched and accepted as real was in fact the self-protective fantasy of a man who's suffered a nervous breakdown. (You can pinpoint where the 'break with reality' probably occurs in retrospect; although fans of the film sometimes argue for even earlier points in the story. The story is rich enough to feed protracted debate.)

But I digress. 'The Science of Sleep'? Yes, watch it as an intriguing oddity from a very original director; enjoy it for the actors, the special effects (especially the stop-motion animation in some of the fantasy sequences), and a few funny moments along the way. But a good film? NO.