Film Review: The Science of Sleep

The subversion of dreams and reality is the subject of Michal Gondry's surreal new film, The Science of Sleep. It starts off pretty innocently, a man plays the host of a TV show. In large letters above his head, there's a sign that says STEPHANE TV. At first, with Stephane jumping from banging on drums to rocking out on the keyboard to talking to the camera, you don't get a chance to focus on things. There's a weird TV in the background with trippy effects playing on a loop. On closer inspection, though, you see the cameras are made of cardboard boxes and the walls cardboard tubes.



And, of course, Stephane is talking about dreams. He unveils a massive pot and puts it on a stove to boil. He grabs some "wishes, dreams, and thoughts of the day" and mixes 'em all together. He pulls back a curtain (literally) and steps into his dream. And...well, that's when things get weird.



But, first, reality intercedes. Stephane gets out of a taxi at his mother's building in a Paris suburb. His father has just died and he is coming from Mexico (where he grew up) to live and work in Paris near his mother, who is notably absent from the film. What follows is a fairly standard "THIS is my job?" sort of compressed movie-time day. There's a new neighbor and an incredible falling piano. But soon enough, Stephane lays down to go to sleep. And then it gets very interesting.



In his dreamworld, Stephane has his TV show, which is more like a conduit to other pastures. And now he has his job and his neighbor and her attractive friend. All these things marry together as if they were cooked in that same pot. Inanimate objects come to life in strange stop-motion that sometimes looks cheap and fake and sometimes computer-animated. There's walking on rooftops and landscapes made of paper and wind. There's rooms on the sides of buildings and cellaphane water. Though the movie is mostly in French, Stephane prefers English and his dreams and reality are often English with occasional Spanish. It's a wild, trippy, ride through someone's pysche. (Maybe Gondry's?)



Over the course of the rather quick film, the wacky world of Stephane's dreams and his real reality, that of a shy artist with a distracted mother and a dreadful job, become intermixed to the point of confusion. For him, mostly. Of course, the viewer is at times equally lost ("Did that really happen?") but it often doesn't matter. The plot - what little of it there is - is all about the heart and the way the heart moves and shifts. The heart itself is an implausible device, something that can not be explained away by the typical methods of movies, and this movie - unlike almost all others - doesn't try to explain why its characters do what they do. We gleam morsels of motivation from Stephane's dreams, but we are equally in the dark as Stephane is, most of the time, about what the hell is going on.

So you might think this kind of film-going experience is exacerbating and frustrating. Most people probably would, but not me. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, from beginning to end. I loved the oddbell dream sequences with their mix of paranoia, wish-fulfillment, and Russian-inspired stop-motion animation. I loved all the secondary characters, especially horndog Guy and weird basketcase love-interest, Stephanie. The Science of Sleep, like any good piece of fiction, creates its own unique world for its characters to live and play in. This one just happens to be a little - okay, a lot - weirder than most.