Finally, a film I can watch over and over again, a sort of film this year has been missing. Prior to seeing this film, Little Miss Sunshine stood as my favorite of the year. That changed soon into this new film by the director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry. This new film, which has many parallels to his previous work, is filled with dreamlike sequences filled with a plethora of artistic accents such as stop-motion photography of cardboard and fabric cutouts. Its main character suffers from a condition in which has trouble differentiating dreams and reality. The film is rightfully called The Science of Sleep.

The film started with a pleasant surprise of French title credits. Entering the theatre, I had no clue the film was foreign. While it is a ‘French’ film, more then half of the dialogue is in English (which the two main characters find easiest to converse with). Another surprise came when I noticed the main character seemed awfully familiar; it happened to be Gael García Bernal (who played the lead role in the Motor Cycle Diaries, portraying Che Guevara).

The film progressed from being quite understandable to, towards the end, a jumble of images and scenes which confuse but at the same time touch inner feelings with great finesse–which made it something memorable, by no means a run of the mill movie. I could truly feel the power of Stephan, the main character, and his love for his apartment neighbor, Stephanie.


Quite an interesting coincidence to have the same name in male female forms, but that’s what movies are for. Another interesting aspect of the film was Stephan’ job: an artist who draws huge natural and man-made disasters for a calendar company. His mother got him and was reluctant to start, but would soon find friendship from his co-workers.

Emotions rushing from wonderful to tragic, I began to feel that this film was neither comedic nor tragic, but something else: perhaps it would be considered a ‘dark comedy.’ Although the film may seem hopeless or desperate at time, it left me with a feeling hope and the passion of love.

Labels: art film, film, foreign film, french, indie film