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

News: Michel Gondry

The oddball French director behind the tip-top Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind and this week’s quirky The Science of Sleep has a fair few more, equally bizarre, projects in the pipeline.

Next up is the movie reference-laden Jack Black-starring comedy Be Kind Rewind, set in a video store run by one of Black’s friends where all the tapes get wiped by Black’s magnetised brain, forcing the pair to recreate such Hollywood classics as The Lion King, Robocop and Back to the Future for the shop’s clientelle. With co-stars including Mos Def, Danny Glover and Mia Farrow, it should prove at the very least interesting, much like Gondry’s other work, and with Black in the lead should prove another Eternal Sunshine-style hit.

After that it looks like a leap back into Gondry’s personal obsession of space, time and human perception for Master of Space and Time. Based on the novel of the same name by Rudy Rucker, it revolves around a couple of (as yet uncast) mad scientists who find a way to control – as if the title isn’t clue enough – space and time. rumours are circulating that Jack Black could again be set to star, but it’s still early days, and isn’t due until next year anyway. Could be fun, though…

News: Gael Garcia Bernal

Rising star Garcia Bernal is currently in two films on general release – the Oscar-tipped Babel being joined this week by The Science of Sleep. Having done a couple of English language flicks (he was trained in London, after all), it’s back to Spanish and boosting the Latin American film industry, with two Mexican flicks and one from Argentina for the star of the hit Mexican flick Y tu mamá también.

Argentinian flick El Pasado will see Bernal play a man who, on splitting from his wife and hooking up with another woman, can’t seem to shake off his ex, while Mexican movie Rudo y Cursi, his latest team up with the director of Y tu mamá también, Alfonso Cuarón, looks set to revolve around the world of football, giving Garcia Bernal a chance to go a bit more physical than his usually philosophical roles allow. After that, it’s time for the young actor to make his directorial debut, in which he will also star, with Déficit, revolving around a family reunion in Mexico in which the two family branches are of decidedly different social backgrounds. He’s certainly on the up, this chap.

News: Charlotte Gainsbourg

The actress probably still best known for her controversial duet with her father Serge Gainsbourg, “Lemon Incest”, recorded when she was just thirteen, is on good form in this week’s the Science of Sleep, and has a fair few more projects lined up that make the best of her multilingual talents.

First up is Nuovomondo (known as The Golden Door in English), which won a bunch of awards at last year’s prestigious Venice Film Festival. Gainsbourg takes the lead in this tale of Italian immigration to the United States at the turn of the 20th century, and has received much praise – but whether this will be enough for this little Franco-Italian-German production to get a proper release is anyone’s guess. After that there’s more foreign language frolics in the French farcical comedy Prête-moi ta main (or I Do: How to Get Married and Stay Single in English), where Gainsbourg plays a woman called in to pretend to be a friend’s girlfriend to stop his family from forcing him into marriage.

Then it’s back to English language roles in cult director Todd Haynes’ intriguing and much-anticipated experimental Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There (alongside the likes of Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Julianne Moore and Adrien Brody), before cropping up in City of Your Final Destination for director James Ivory (of Merchant Ivory fame), alongside Anthony Hopkins and Laura Linney. She’s doing well.