Mood Indigo (15.)
Directed by Michel Gondry.
Starring Roman Duris, Audrey Tatou, Gad Elmaleh, Sy Omar, Aissa Maiga and Charlotte Le Bon. Fench with subtitles. 94 mins
The latest film from Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) is as ceaselessly inventive and visually reckless as any film he has made, which must be a positive. It is also the most French of his films, which isn’t. It may be dazzling, wondrous and quite unlike anything you’ve ever seen but it is not, ultimately, your friend. I can’t remember ever feeling quite so shunned by a movie. It gives you everything, except a way in.
The film lost me within a minute of starting, but it never quite shook me off. One of its more endearing visual conceits is a variation on the infinite monkeys and the infinite number of typewriters. At the start of the film and throughout we visit a room filled by a finite number of people sat in rows each of which is made up of a conveyor belt of typewriters that move slowly past allowing each person to tap in a line or two to the ongoing texts, which make up the story we are watching. This sums up the delicate balance the film is trying to strike between frivolity and poignancy but never quite hits.
It may be indicative of the film's problem that the novel it is taken from, L’Ecume de Jours by Boris Vian, has as many English titles as it has English translations (take your pick from The Froth of Daydreams/ The Foam of the Daze/ The Spray of the Days) each of which is uniquely inadequate to convey the wordplay and flights of fancy used by the author. Non French speakers are at a big disadvantage with this film because the screen is so full and busy it takes great discipline to follow the subtitles.
Gondry tries to honour the text with a bombardment of visual tricks. These are indeed stunning and because they often use traditional techniques such as back projection, stop motion animation, false perspective and puppets rather than CGIs these tricks have real magic. (For people in my age group it echoes childhood favourites such as Vision On or Bagpuss.) The problem is that as you are never invited to engage with the narrative - a love story between a rich dilettante (Duris) and the sickly Chloe (Tatou) - it is all just a succession of rabbits out of hats without any context or involvement. It wants to be light and playful, it ends up haughty and aloof. In the first half the characters are almost insufferably pleased with themselves and their own precious wackiness. It is only the advent of tragedy in the second half that makes them bearable.
Directed by Michel Gondry.
Starring Roman Duris, Audrey Tatou, Gad Elmaleh, Sy Omar, Aissa Maiga and Charlotte Le Bon. Fench with subtitles. 94 mins
The latest film from Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) is as ceaselessly inventive and visually reckless as any film he has made, which must be a positive. It is also the most French of his films, which isn’t. It may be dazzling, wondrous and quite unlike anything you’ve ever seen but it is not, ultimately, your friend. I can’t remember ever feeling quite so shunned by a movie. It gives you everything, except a way in.
The film lost me within a minute of starting, but it never quite shook me off. One of its more endearing visual conceits is a variation on the infinite monkeys and the infinite number of typewriters. At the start of the film and throughout we visit a room filled by a finite number of people sat in rows each of which is made up of a conveyor belt of typewriters that move slowly past allowing each person to tap in a line or two to the ongoing texts, which make up the story we are watching. This sums up the delicate balance the film is trying to strike between frivolity and poignancy but never quite hits.
It may be indicative of the film's problem that the novel it is taken from, L’Ecume de Jours by Boris Vian, has as many English titles as it has English translations (take your pick from The Froth of Daydreams/ The Foam of the Daze/ The Spray of the Days) each of which is uniquely inadequate to convey the wordplay and flights of fancy used by the author. Non French speakers are at a big disadvantage with this film because the screen is so full and busy it takes great discipline to follow the subtitles.
Gondry tries to honour the text with a bombardment of visual tricks. These are indeed stunning and because they often use traditional techniques such as back projection, stop motion animation, false perspective and puppets rather than CGIs these tricks have real magic. (For people in my age group it echoes childhood favourites such as Vision On or Bagpuss.) The problem is that as you are never invited to engage with the narrative - a love story between a rich dilettante (Duris) and the sickly Chloe (Tatou) - it is all just a succession of rabbits out of hats without any context or involvement. It wants to be light and playful, it ends up haughty and aloof. In the first half the characters are almost insufferably pleased with themselves and their own precious wackiness. It is only the advent of tragedy in the second half that makes them bearable.
