Alain Chabat and Gael Garcia Bernal face off
So we made our annual pilgrimmage up to Austin to see a movie last weekend -- since San Marcos has outlawed legimate theaters within city limits -- last fall it was Capote, an excellent, albeit limited film featuring a star turn by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who immediately disappeared (though he apparently has several films coming out next year). This year, the Science of Sleep, written and directed by Michel Gondry, who also directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, an excellent film from two years ago but one which was co-written by Charlie Kaufman, who also wrote Adaptation and Being John Malkovich. Got all that? It's important, because the barely cohesive wackiness that Kaufman brings to the table was exactly what was missing from this film, leaving us with a series of vignettes that almost seemed to loop back on themselves into a big, confusing mess.
That mess was pretty endearing, however. You really couldn't help root for Bernal, as well as the oddly attractive Charlotte Gainsbourg (who not only is, in fact, the daughter of Serge, but also shares my birthday). There is a recurring motif in the film where Bernal, who seems to exist at least 75% of the time in his own dreamworld, has a sort of homemade movie studio where he creates and "projects" his dreams. The idea, and the energy that Gondry and Bernal puff into it, is really what drives the film, even moreso than the love story with Gainsborg, which is somewhat conventional. I couldn't help wishing, however, that Kaufman or someone had come along and put that little extra bit of shine on the story so that it held together better.
The whole thing was made enormously more enjoyable by the fact that we saw it in the Alamo Drafthouse South, the theater was largely empty, and we were able to enjoy good food and beverages which came just as the movie started. Yet another of the strange and wonderful things that Austin manages to get right.
