It was wise of Michel Gondry to do a follow-up what I consider to be the most brilliant film of the century (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) with this light-hearted, surreal piece of brain-candy. The Science of Sleep is clever and funny, and is of course, filled with the director's trademark visual stylings - and though on the surface it may seem little more than a lot of irreverent farcical fluff (a 7 year-old boy's conception of a Romantic Comedy) there's quite a bit more to it. It will probably be interpreted in a hundred different ways and I have my own ideas about it that you may or may not agree with - still for the most part I believe that Gondry shot this picture as a palette cleanser for himself and the multitudes whom, after Eternal Sunshine, probably expect his farts to have catchy melodies.

The title of the film itself is intended as a joke, and before the first minute of the film has elapsed it's become abundantly clear that there will be nothing scientific, much less drowsy about this frenetic tip of the hat to the classic French farce. The story begins inside the head of the films' central character Stephane, (Gael Garcia Bernal) just as he is about to succumb to slumber and we get a taste of the kind of science involved in the film. Stephane is the host, band, announcer, chief cook and bottle washer of a show he produces in his mind - intended, I would think, to represent those strange, nonsensical, distorted thought patterns that we experience just before falling asleep. The subject of this nights program is cooking, and a lively Chef Stephane is standing behind a big boiling pot, walking us through the recipe for dreams. He tosses in such ingredients as "the events of the day" a dash of "random thoughts" and so on and when the recipe is complete and brought to boil he steps to a doorway at the back of the set, pushes open a shower curtain and steps into an endless blue void where dreams are found. Though he returns to this set several times during the film the dream-formula is the sum total of our brush with science.

Stephane is a bit of an odd lad, who has grown up with a disorder of some kind that limits his ability to distinguish between dreams and reality and Gondry draws the audience into this condition. By the midpoint of the film it has become almost impossible to know if what we're seeing at any given moment is reality or a dream. Stephane's father has recently passed on, an occasion that his mother uses to persuade her son to stay in his hometown by getting him a job as a graphic artist. His workplace is populated by 3 bizarre characters who gabble about swearing at each other in various languages some of which we get as hilariously abbreviated subtitles - in a way it all reminded me of something out of Benny Hill. Just as an example of how loopy Gondry's world is, Stephane is sat down and shown his job which consisted of pasting the name of the month at the top of calendar pages. Taking this as a grievous insult to his artistic abilities, he flies into a rage and barges into the bosses office to show him a calendar of his own creation where the picture for each month are graphic illustrations of major tragedies and disasters (airplane explosions, massive earthquakes etc.)

As you may well imagine, particularly if you've followed Gondry's career, The Science of Sleep is a visual stunner, and there are several images in the film that will remind many of his work back in the day when he was directing music videos. The majority of the film revolves around Stephane's infatuation with his beautiful next door neighbor in his apartment building. Her name is Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg - 21 Grams) and though she is attracted to Stephane there is some confusion as to whether he is interested in her or her friend. She is also concerned by his strange and childish behavior. As Gondry has shown in the past, he has a preternatural understanding of love and how it works and often fails when pent up and distorted by the confines of relationships. In Eternal Sunshine he spent much of the film unraveling it's complexities and in The Science of Sleep he examines love at it's essence, breaking it down to it's most simple elements. In this sense, Science of Sleep works as an interesting companion piece to it's complicated older brother Eternal Sunshine. In the end Stephane and Stephanie are like children playing with love as if it were some fascinating old board game they've discovered in the attic.

The two lovers argue and become cross with each other when the game isn't going their way. They storm off and refuse to speak to each other, and pretend not to be interested in the silly little game any more. In the end, however, they find the game to be too compelling and eventually want to play some more. They're so childish. What a genius, this Frenchman. Not bad for a palette cleanser.