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THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP Send This Review to a Friend
If you are prepared to be exasperated, you’ll find a smattering of charming and creative moments in writer-director Michel Gondry’s “The Science of Sleep,” set in Paris. For one thing there is Mexican star Gael Garcia Bernal, who plays Stephane, and for another there is the generally interesting Charlotte Gainsbourg who portrays Stephanie, the neighbor with whom Stephane is smitten. As for credentials, Gondry received an Oscar for his screenplay for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”
The gimmick here is that Stephane is a dreamer with a very rich fantasy life in which he imagines himself in all sorts of edifying situations that take him out of his humdrum existence. He wants to be an artist but is mired in a boring job for a calendar publisher. Only his mind is free.
Gondry’s method is to match Stephane’s imagination with cinematic technique, including animation and assorted effects. For a while this seems oh-so-clever and an amusing, refreshing way to tell a romantic tale.
But, at the heart of the film, the characters are banal, and the storytelling becomes tiresome. After a while my own fantasy world included a hasty escape from the screening room, but reality kept me there looking at my watch. A Warner Independent Pictures release.
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