No Science for Sleep

The Science of Sleep is a rare beast. In itself it is as much a work of joy, brimming with unabashed creativity and imagination as it is of sadness and woeful abandon. The film starts audaciously enough with a TV show Stephane (Gael García Bernal) hosts in his dream. He shows how dreams are made and that sets off the tone for the rest of the film which exists in a world made up of Stefan's dreams, real life and the place in between where dream and waking life both merge seamlessly.

Stephane is an aspiring young artist who comes to Paris after the death of his father in Mexico. His French mother gets him a job at a calender designing company where Stefan is distraught to learn the job isn't the artistic type he was promised. He endures his time at his dismal workplace with boorish colleagues and makes tentative shy acquaintance with his neighbouring flat tenant Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Soon enough Stephane is helping Stéphanie with her art project and this eventually leads to that heartbreaking realization for any boy who falls for a girl who only thinks of him as just a friend.

Michel Gondry, sprinkles this most simplest of story with sparse visual confetti to make it a special special viewing as well as an emotive experience. There are scenes in the film where some dream logic seeps into the waking world. Cellophane comes out of taps, tufts of cotton stay afloat in air to a particular pitch of music, Stephane makes a time machine that goes a second in time forward or backwards. The dream sequences are staged with rudimentary cardboard sets and cityscapes. These sequences provide a surprisingly refreshing antidote to the more pristine CGI effects.

Despite all the imaginative detours, the film has so much more that makes it a sad endearing wince of a joy and yet just like any other film or book or piece of music that you love, I feel inadequate to express its delicate beauty.

The last scene shot of the film can be seen as self defeating, escapist fantasy taking precedence over the more painful living life. A wistful fairy tale conclusion.