THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP

by Kevin Koehler

The Science of Sleep is so lovely, so gloriously un-cynical that I almost don’t want to ruin it by writing about it. I will write about it, of course, so apologies in advance for that. This is what I do.

After years spent in Mexico, Stephane Miroux (Bernal) is enticed by his Parisian mother (Miou-Miou) to return to the home of his childhood with the promise of employment. Stephane is an artist; his series of paintings, “Disastrology,” feature airplane crashes and earthquakes. He intends it to be comical, which it sort of is, but no one else finds it funny. Stephane thinks he is going to be illustrating calendars but is actually hired to typeset them. His coworkers speak little Spanish and Stephane speaks little French so everyone basically speaks in English, except when someone is being ridiculed, in which case they speak in whatever language that person can’t understand. A guy named Guy (Chabat) dominates the office with generally rude and crude behavior; he and Stephane become quick friends.

Living next door to Stephane is Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), pretty enough to interest Stephane but ugly enough to be approachable. Her apartment has a hoarder’s aesthetic, cluttered in ways only the French can get away with. They intrigue each other, kindred artistic spirits; Stephane shares some of his strange inventions like a one-second time machine and a pair of glasses that allow you to view life in 3-D. She's puzzled: “Isn’t life already in 3-D?” Not necessarily. He thinks he’s doing her a favor by asking her out until she turns him down. "Why me?" she asks. "Because everyone else is boring."

I should also mention that Stephane frequently views his own life through the prism of a cable access television variety show being broadcast from inside his head. It’s not as pretentious as it sounds.

Undoubtedly, there are people who will call The Science of Sleep indulgent. They're right. The film is an unbroken synthesis of delusion and reality where the two are often indistinguishable, a hallucinatory waking dream of live action, stop-motion, claymation, and cardboard. Yes, Science is indulgent, but sometimes it’s nice to watch a gifted director like Michel Gondry indulge himself. Best known for his innovative music videos with Bjork (he is the progenitor of Matrix-style “bullet time,” so now you know who to blame) and later for adapting Charlie Kaufman scripts (Human Nature and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), Science is the first produced feature that Gondry wrote in addition to directing. His personal investment shows: from the surreal set design to Stephane’s character quirks and anxieties, Gondry’s intimate touch is unmistakable - a pure auteurist vision in every conceivable way. It's Eternal Sunshine unhinged, Amelie as imagined by a polar bear.

Stephane, eternally on the run from his own subconscious, has an existential theory that he calls Parallel Synchronized Randomness. "It's an application of chaos theory," he says. "Random control." What we think is without meaning, like our dreams, could actually be ordered in a ways we don't recognize. Dreams are malleable but so is waking life; they interact in ways that are often uncomfortable to admit. One adjusts to match the other, but the mirror is always changing. So where does the fantasy end and real life begin?

The Science of Sleep would tell you: it depends on how big your dream and whether you want to wake up or not.

Interesting footnote: Michel Gondry recently wrapped principal photography on Be Kind Rewind. The picture stars Jack Black as a man who inadvertently demagnetizes every tape in his friend's video store. Together, the two seek to remake the films that have been lost, including Robocop, Rush Hour 2, and Back to the Future.

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