Review: The Science of Sleep

UK release date: 16th February

Less accessible than his Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, director/screenwriter Michel Gondry’s pretentious sci-fi vanity production is an overly whimsical, infantile affair.

Gael García Bernal plays a graphic artist who returns to Paris after his father’s death. Will he ever realise his neighbour Charlotte Gainsbourg is the soul mate he’s been searching for? Or will he continually dream he’s the host of a one-man TV chat show starring a swirling melting-pot of his desires?

With its makeshift “Blue Peter”-style special effects (constructed from egg boxes, clay and cellophane), the consistently juvenile approach soon becomes wearing and the whole self-indulgent mess is a complete waste of Bernal and Gainsbourg’s charms. Resembling Gondry’s Bjork rock videos strung between surreally presented concepts of romantic angst, this fey fantasy is frustratingly hollow. The “one second time machine” is the single clever laugh.

Radio Times rating:

**

UK cinema certificate 15

Review by Alan Jones