Don't sleep, dream

Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep is odd but fascinating.

I'm about 12 months behind the curve on film-watching (this played Sundance in '05!), but I finally popped in this DVD and instantly was taken. Back when I was a projectionist in L.A., I met Gondry at a screening of Human Nature, where we talked about Russian animation and his then-new Radiohead video. He was candid when it came to style and influences. For example, the mise-en-scene of "Knives Out" is a warm-up for Sleep (sets with movement, characters made of inanimate objects, etc), and he dropped the works of Khitruk and Jove as influences, which are name-dropped by Stephane (Gael Garcia Bernal), the main character whose dream makes up the narrative of Sleep. So, obviously, Stephane is Gondry in his 20s--shy, uncertain, talented and terrible with women.

Gondry wrote Sleep himself, and the autobiographical undercurrent is quite revealing—maybe incriminating, given his self-destructive and borderline pathological insecurity. But the film is a dream, so it is expected to have a certain vulnerability, which is admirable and very heart-on-sleeve.

If you haven't seen Sleep, here' s a brief synopsis: Stephane, a Mexican-born designer who lives in America, is told by his mother that there's an excellent job waiting for him in Paris. Stephane moves back to Paris and into his mom's apartment, but the job sucks—he's part of the production line for crappy puppy-dog and softcore-porn calendars. Bit by bit, Stephane's dreams take over his reality. A neighbor, Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg) moves in, and he falls in love with her but cannot reconcile his emotions with reality. His dreams become more vivid; reality and dream further conflict.

The narrative is a unique spin on how the unconscious fucks with us and our everyday routines. And while this take is nothing new, the way Gondry frames the story is quite an achievement.
The best parts are when Stephane's shitty job, love life, sexual insecurities and wild imagination take hold—like the dream sequence where he passes out in the bathtub. The seamlessness of how Gondry integrates props, sets and the tangible and the dream is pretty remarkable—especially when you consider the pathetic wizardry of computer visual effects of today's Hollywood blockbusters.

I also thought about how I watch and listen on the radio to about 20-25 hours of baseball each week, and I enjoy it for the minutiae of the sport, the math, the competition and unknown outcome, something I felt lacking in films of late. One might say Sleep is not unlike baseball: it's rooted in dream theory, or math, it's unpredictable, and it's definitely game.