I’m starting to get that itch of obsession that comes after watching an irrationally beautiful Gondry film, and ends with me making a blanket fort in my bedroom and watching his films all over again. Most of us found out about his surrealistic majesty after seeing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, followed by my favorite of his films, The Science of Sleep, but then we all sort of forgot about him after Be Kind Rewind. Well, he’s back, and all is right with the world.
His latest film, Mood Indigo, is an adaptation of Boris Vian’s novel, Froth on the Daydream, which I had not read but probably will at some point after seeing Gondry’s take on it. It tells the story of a rich bachelor, who has a great life, a neurotic friend, and an awesome cook. He soon meets the girl of his dreams and the movie takes off from there. I’m afraid if I give any more plot than that, I’ll have given away the film.
Let us forget the plot for a moment, as this is a Gondry film and the plot tends to pale in importance to the visual beauty and otherworldly inventiveness. It has all the DIY weirdness that you’d come to expect. For instance, there is a “cloud car,” which appears to be one of those kiddie rides you might find in front of a grocery store — sometimes shaped like a plane or a train — that are supposed to bounce around, up and down but, underwhelmingly, remain stationary. Luckily, this is a Gondry film and his “cloud car” actually does what every little kid or drunk adult thinks it does: fly around the city. His ability to make films so imaginative that they are sometimes shrugged off as childish in their creativity is what separates him from other filmmakers. The worlds he creates have no rules. Instead, everything is possible in a way that makes you feel as if you could do it too, if only if you would get out of your own way. This film, like everything that Michel Gondry creates, is excess in its purest form. It is imagination completely unhindered. Most of all, I walked home wanting to shout, as Colin does in the film, “I demand to fall in love, too!”
Review by Timothy White. You can follow him on Twitter @TipToTheHip
