Sometimes, when I try to look at a star – I can see it clearly out of the corner of my eye, or I can catch it in my peripheral vision – but when I try to focus on it, it sort of evaporates and there just isn’t enough to focus on, even though I know it’s there.
That’s the way it is with my dreams too. I have a tendency to forget them immediately after I experience them. I wake up and the dream is there, so real I have trouble believing I didn’t just live through it – then in almost measurable increments it slips away piece by piece until it’s gone.
In The Science of Sleep, Stephane, a Mexican who returns to Paris to live with his French mother, has the opposite problem.
Since his childhood, his mother explains to a friend, Stephane, played by Gael Garcia Bernal, has “inverted” dream life and waking life – mixing the two together until he is unsure which is which.
The power of his imagination lends his dreams a sharp, vivid realness that he can’t escape, even outside of sleep, and that draws the viewer into the crazy cut and paste world of his imagination.
This tendency begins to complicate his life when he falls in love with Stephanie -- Charlotte Gainsbourg – his new neighbour across the hall, and begins confusing their real life interactions with those he has only imagined.
Michael Gondry, who expertly directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, along with a ton of music videos, takes us right inside Stephane’s dreams. And you feel like you’re there.
Using recycled, everyday materials like milk cartons, toilet paper tubes and cellophane, Gondry creates beautiful make-believe worlds that are so dream-like they help me recapture pieces of the ones I forgot.
There’s a beautiful scene where Stephane and Stephanie become excited about a project they want to work on together with old packing materials and old toys she has around her apartment. Their enthusiasm is infectious, as they describe how cotton balls could become clouds, pieces of cellophane could serve as the sea and how a small wooden boat could be filled with a forest to create a “vegetable Noah’s Ark,” Stephane explains breathlessly.
And as they run around picking up materials and planning it out the scene comes to life in simple, child-like animated goodness.
I got excited too and found myself planning my own little animated film sequence and convincing myself I was actually going to do it (mine involved a Lite-Brite).
His favourite dream involves a TV show where he is the host, camera-man and director, and the people in his life are the guests.
Stephane’s dreams run his life – to the detriment of his job cutting and pasting generic calendar components together – his strange pseudo-relationship with Stephanie, and even his day-to-day activities.
He never really outgrew the imaginary friends and imaginary life he created for himself when he was a kid, and as a result the cute factor wears off quick and he becomes somewhat frustrating to watch.
The aesthetic appeal of this film makes it worth watching – it really will blow your mind in a manageable way – but the story is a bit weak, the breakthrough you hope Stephane will make never really happens, and the ending is unsatisfying.
That being said it’s a feast for the senses, with dialogue flipping seamlessly between English, French and Spanish, beautifully rendered dream sequences and a meshing of fantasy and reality that will have you saying “what the..?” in a good way.
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