Hey, have you ever seen…The Science of Sleep?

Stephane:

This girl is at once all the women that broke my heart. She is so beautiful and generous and she is asking me to leave because she is dumping me. She is dumping me because I am a cheap drug dealer. And I am a drug dealer because she wants to leave me.

Ah Michel Gondry, you can do no wrong in my book.

This is another of those films that may be familiar to a lot of the usual contributors of DumbDrum, being the bunch of uber-nerds that we are, but that has sort of passed from the public consciousness almost as soon as it left theaters (if it ever made it there in the first place).  Even myself, I always am sort of taken aback when I see this DVD in the collection, like, “Oh…oh yeah!  That one!”  It’s the sort of movie that you can’t believe you forgot about after you’d forgotten about it, and it immediately gets tossed in the ole’ Panasonic for some enjoyment.

If you’re unfamiliar with Gondry’s work, his style can take a bit of getting used to.  It seems like this movie, being smaller, more ah…international, and not starring Jim Carrey was given a bit more creative license than his previous work Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which strikes one as only juuust too well received to have been in this article instead of The Science…).  The Science… has more of the zany stylistic flashes we’re used to seeing in Gondry’s music videos.  It has the gigantic hands.  It has corrugated cardboard set pieces.  It has balls of cotton as clouds.  Indoors.  But it doesn’t come off as some over-blown artist trying to be clever. It’s how things are, in this world.

The Science of Sleep is similar to Eternal Sunshine in that we’re exploring the inner thought processes of our main character Stephane, (as in Stefan) played with all the “aw shucks” boyishness and schizophrenic logic one could want by Gael Garcia Bernal.  The difference being that this isn’t a film about memories, but about the role of dreams, and what happens when they start to intrude on waking life.  Sometimes the results are clever and sweet, and sometimes they’re awkward and uncomfortable.  Sometimes, Stephane is just creating some crazy shit.

Parallel Synchronized Randomness.  I’m just sayin.

It’s a little bit love story, a little bit cerebral “what the hell just happened?” and a little bit drama.  It’s funny, melancholy, lonely, sad, and hopeful.  It is certainly, if nothing else, worth watching at least once.  And then you’ll forget about it for awhile, and then one day, you’ll be looking at your DVD shelf, and you’ll see that soft sky blue cover with white lettering, and you’ll think, “Oh yeah!”