The Science of Sleep

Michel Gondry's latest somnambulist dramedy, The Science of Sleep, focuses on a bored, frustrated manchild named Stéphane (Gael García Bernal) who prefers dreams to reality. It's not very hard to understand why.

By day, he's a lonely, awkward social pariah. Newly arrived in France to stay with his mother following the loss of his father in Mexico, Stéphane finds himself working a tedious job at a calendar company and living alone in a cramped loft. He's shy, particularly about speaking French, and also highly eccentric.

Prone to rants, fits of sudden irrationality and even anger, Stéphane finds it hard to relate to those around him. He meets his new neighbor, the adorable and withdrawn Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and likes her immediately, but can't even bring himself to admit that he lives next door. (For a while, he maintains a ridiculous charade of pretending to live 20 minutes away, leaving his apartment and then stomping back up the stairs to announce his impending arrival.) So forget about trying to get a date or telling her she's attractive.

Stéphane hasn't really made a go of life in the real world. He's just too timid, too unconventional and too terrified of rejection.

But he's an excellent dreamer. So excellent and imaginative, in fact, that he becomes unstuck in his own consciousness. The line between reality and dreams begins to blur, causing some measure of embarrassment but also a healthy dose of emotional anguish. Like a schizophrenic (or "schizometric," in Stéphane's parlance), he gets confused when his life doesn't conform to his fantasies and frustrated when he can't act on his desires.

Rather than making a case for the infinite powers of imagination, as have so many other filmmakers before him, Gondry argues that our dreams provide us with an escape from our mundane lives and an outlet for our suppressed urges. Unfortunately, no amount of sleeping can substitute for the hard work of actually living.



It's an interesting, challenging film and it's full of terrific effects sequences blending live footage with stop-motion animation. But Science of Sleep pales in comparison to Gondry's previous effort, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Gondry seems adrift without screenwriter Charles Kaufman providing an intricate, dense and provocative structure on which to hang his designs, fantasies and set pieces.

Bernal is really terrific as Stéphane, commanding the audience's interest while remaining quiet and reserved. For any actor to maintain the viewer's attention among all the animation and effects on display here would be a significant achievement. Still, I never found the character sympathetic. Like a slightly more insane, male version of Amelié, Stéphane's a whimsical creation. He's literally the ultimate dreamer, distracted by his fantasies and inventions, desperate to remake the world to fit the contours of his brain. Yet his boyish naivete and even stupidity grow tiresome quickly. We understand why Stéphane would fall in love for his cute, spunky new neighbor, but we're not quite sure if she would actually want to be around him for more than a few minutes at a time.

Stéphane's problems begin in earnest during a routine bath. He has a strange dream in which he composes a confessional letter to Stéphanie using a spider-typewriter. When he wakes up, Stéphane's horrified to discover that he has actually written the letter and slipped it under Stéphanie's door while sleeping. It's the first time out of many that his dreamlife will intrude upon his budding romance.

These mix-ups between Stéphane's life and imagination provide the film with its few genuinely funny moments. In one terrifically-edited seqeunce, Stéphane's dancing around at an imaginary office party wearing a silly animal costume. He opens the door and suddenly, he's in the real world, face to face with his comely neighbor. It takes both the character and the audience a brief moment to adjust from the trippy Bjork video vibe of the dream sequence to the mundaneness of the following shot.

Gondry fills the dream sequences with baroque, surreal detail. Stéphane wanders through stop-motion animated cityscapes in which macrame birds swoop between fluttering cardboard buildings. He can jump out of a window and begin swimming through the sky. He can also get revenge on the boss (Pierre Vaneck) who doesn't respect his paintings, fuck the fetching nerd from his office (Aurélia Petit) and finally tell his mother (Miou-Miou) how he really feels about her. Such is the power and the freedom of the dream world.

To highlight the difference between Stéphane's mind and his environment, Gondry films the dreams in wide-angles and the real world in tight, claustrophobic close-up. We see Stéphane arriving at his new home in the back of a taxi, and as he makes his way to the front door, Gondry's camera remains behind in the car. Once he gets to the door, the camera moves inside the building, peering out at Stéphane through a hole in the lattice. Is he being constantly scrutinzed by people on the street or is that just how he feels?

Compare this to Stéphane's dreams, which always begin in the same mock TV studio. Two shutters fill in for his eyelids, and Stéphane's ego can look on to the real world and comment on the action from a safe distance. Asleep, he's transformed into the watcher, removing his fear and anxiety and allowing his true, uninhibited self to emerge. (Bernal appropriately becomes more talkative and bellicose in the dream scenes).

Of course, this is why he can only relate to the imaginary version of Stéphanie he meets in his dreams. In reality, she judges him. She gets scared when he lashes out or becomes forgetful. She dances seductively with other men and refuses his sexual advances. Only when he's asleep is he in control.

It's a bit creepy, really, and it's to Gondry's credit that he doesn't soften Stéphane's sharper edges to make him more heroic. But all the same, it's hard to relate to this guy, who could solve so many of his problems just by taking a few deep breaths and accepting life at face value. I think Gondry's a bit too easy on Stéphane when all is said and done. Stéphanie suggests that he should "toughen up," and not let girls see him cry, and his free-spirited, bohemian friend Guy (Alain Chabat) recommends that he focus his energy on getting laid, but it's clear that Gondry finds his hero perfect just the way he is, peculiarities and all.

To be honest, over the course of a 2 hour movie spent entirely in Stéphane's head, I got pretty sick of him. His incessant whining, his inability to accept the blatantly obvious, his "adorable" malapropisms - it's just all a bit precious. Whimsy's not easy, and Science of Sleep occasionally pushes the Twee Factor too forcefully.

In addition to painting, Stéphane's also fashioned some "remarkable" inventions. He's particularly proud of his time machine, that can propel the user backwards or forwards in time for one second, but also boasts about 3D glasses that can render the real world in 3D.

"Isn't the whole world already in 3D?," asks Stéphanie.

"Not really," replies Stéphane.

"Dude, yes, it totally fucking is, what the hell are you talking about?" I thought during this scene. I really wanted to believe, I really did, but real-world 3D glasses aren't creative or artsy or evidence of a childlike sense of wonder. They're just retarded.