The Science Of Sleep.

Wow! Almost 3 months without going to the cinema. That's to say how tired I am! ^^;
Well actually I WOULD have gone, if only the movies i wanted to see had been released around here!
What about Black Book or The Fountain? I would have wanted to see those so much. But the closest they got from my home was around 50km. I don't do 50km for watching a movie. Then you'll say that I didn't want to watch them that much... But dedication has its limits! :p

Anyway February has seen my 1st outing in month to see The Science Of Sleep, a movie I've been eying ever since I knew that 1) it was Michel "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind" Gondry's latest 2) it was released in France 6 months ago.
I can't say how much I loved Eternal Sunshine, beautiful story beautifully told. I especially appreciated Gondry's eerie weirdness and how he used all sorts of effects, all optical, to convey it, with a sort of stubborn romanticism. This was top of my 2004 cinema top 10.

So I know it's bad, it spoils aeverything, but somehow I had high expectations for this. I didn't know what to expect but I wanted it to make me escape the way Eternal Sunshine did. Well I can now say happily that I wasn't disappointed.

The story centers around Stephane, young mid 20s guy, lured by his mom into coming from Mexico back to Paris. He barely speaks French and the job his mom got him is everything he didn't want: he's the creative type and he's doing basically a monkey's job. One of his particularities is that he dreams a lot and as he sees his life being more and more away from what he wanted it to be, back in his old kid room, being stuck in a shit job in a country he doesn't really know, when his colleagues or people just make of of him as he can't really speak French, he escapes more and more into his dreams which start mingling with reality, to the point where he actually doesn't know what is true or part of his imagination, bringing the audience with him.

As I write this I suddenly realise that somehow it's a bit Lost In Translation but in France and with a twist (the dreams).

It's a story of "boy meets girl", but with a lot of layers. It centers more on his main character, who's a bit this kid who hasn't grown out his dreams at all. Unresolved grieving about a lost father and a exploded family floats in the background...

The whole movie really feels like a dream, when different unrelated things seen through the day mix together to make things sometimes funny sometimes weird, sometimes unpleasant.

I'm always impressed at movies that actually can physically reproduce on the audience feelings that the characters can feel. Here at some point you really feel like "reality" is fading away. What's real? Was it a dream?
This is what cinema, to me, is all about.
Experience.

This was a great one.