20 Years Ago, Michel Gondry Made His Second Masterpiece About Dreams and Romance
The Science of Sleep is more than an Eternal Sunshine runner-up.
In the mid-2000s, Michel Gondry directed a movie about the doomed romance between an insecure man-child and a creative, flighty woman, in which the boundaries between reality and dreams are often fluid, and the characters’ emotions inform their fantastical experiences. That describes his 2004 masterpiece Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but it’s just as applicable to his underappreciated follow-up, 2006’s The Science of Sleep.
Released in U.S. theaters 20 years ago this week, The Science of Sleep didn’t make the same immediate impact as Eternal Sunshine, and it hasn’t enjoyed the same lasting reputation. But it’s another excellent example of Gondry’s filmmaking ingenuity and artistic sensitivity, with the kind of ramshackle, handmade aesthetic that he’d carry over into the more mainstream Be Kind Rewind a couple of years later. Its love story is pricklier and less grand than the romance between Jim Carrey’s Joel and Kate Winslet’s Clementine in Eternal Sunshine, although it’s equally reflective of the toxic dynamic between two people who seem appealingly quirky on the outside, but are deeply troubled on the inside.
For Stéphane Miroux (Gael Garcia Bernal), that manifests in an often pathological inability to separate his dream world from the real world. His mother Christine (Miou-Miou) dismisses it as an endearing tendency he’s had since childhood, but it clearly hinders his day-to-day functionality and makes it difficult for him to interact with others. That includes his new neighbor Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), an energetic free spirit who immediately catches Stéphane’s attention, even though his physical attraction is initially directed toward Stéphanie’s friend Zoe (Emma de Caunes).
Stéphane is perpetually disoriented, having just moved back to Paris from Mexico, where he grew up with his late father following his parents’ divorce. His mother has lured him home with the promise of a job that will engage his skills as an artist, but that turns out to mostly be a ruse so that she can finally have her son back, living in his childhood bedroom in the apartment building that she owns. Since he spent most of his life in Mexico, Stéphane barely speaks French, and he’s often confused by his co-workers’ conversations. He’s also unhappy with a job that involves cutting and pasting bits of text onto calendars, rather than designing the artwork.
Bernal and Gainsbourg have offbeat chemistry.
Instead, Stéphane channels his imagination into his inner life, frequently represented by a talk show-style set made out of cardboard, where he explains the formula for his dreams and communicates with distorted versions of the people in his life. The Science of Sleep is partly a story about a man who is lost in his own head, but then the people he encounters end up lost in his head, too. “I’m exhausted — I’m going to wake up now,” Stéphane says during one nocturnal interlude, and Gondry blurs the distinction between Stéphane’s dreamlike fantasies and his dreamlike everyday existence. The transitions are often so seamless that it’s impossible to tell what’s meant to be actually happening.
That approach could be frustrating, but Gondry maintains a giddy sense of wonder even when Stéphane is acting like a complete jerk, treating Stéphanie like an easily manipulated figment of his imagination rather than an independent person with her own feelings and desires. The obvious route for the plot would be to bring these two weirdos together, but just because they have the same enthusiasm for turning found objects into art doesn’t mean that they’re romantic soulmates.
The movie showcases Gondry’s flair for handmade practical effects.
The purest moments of connection between Stéphane and Stéphanie occur during their artistic collaborations, as they bounce ideas off each other and those ideas spring to life around them, via Gondry’s inventive practical effects. That joy of creation is key to later Gondry films, including Be Kind Rewind and his father-daughter animated team-up Maya, Give Me a Title, but it’s not enough to satisfy Stéphane, who becomes sexually fixated on Stéphanie in a way that damages their sweet, almost childlike bond.
Bernal and Gainsbourg have enough chemistry to fool viewers into rooting for them to get together, but Gondry isn’t interested in a conventional romantic resolution. He isn’t interested in conventional narrative, either, and The Science of Sleep can be confusing in a different way than the densely plotted Eternal Sunshine. While Eternal Sunshine embodies the wonky existentialism of co-writer Charlie Kaufman, The Science of Sleep, which Gondry wrote solo, is more impressionistic.
Eventually there’s no use trying to figure out what’s real and what’s imagined, since Stéphane can’t figure it out, either. It’s best just to let go and appreciate the woozy, sensual experience, rather than getting hung up on details. As Stéphane demonstrates, focusing on a specific outcome only leads to disappointment and misery.
