Michel Gondry 2013 France
Starring: Audrey Tautou, Romain Duris, Aïssa Maïga, Gad Elmaleh, Omar Sy, Charlotte Le Bon, Philippe Torreton
In the past Michel Gondry's best films have always melded the recognisable and the surreal, working within dream worlds while still retaining a basis in reality but now, after a wildly miscast, largely disappointing Hollywood venture that took place exclusively in modern day L.A., he's gone entirely in the other direction, adapting Boris Vian's bizarre, 'unfilmable' (although several have tried) satire of existentialism and the bourgeois, Froth On The Daydream, to within an inch of its life and becoming more absurd, enchanting, abrasively twee and bat-shit crazy than he's ever been before. Mood Indigo takes place in Paris although this city isn't so much one of magic as of magical proportions. Vast buildings and inventive architecture dot the skyline, people check information via futuristic yet retro computerised telescopes that link to an office of workers telling them what they want to know (Gondry's reference to an increasing reliance on Siri and Google perhaps), lovers take leisurely pleasure-trips in flying vehicles of glass that call to mind both clouds and cars from the Flintstones, their feet visibly dangling from the underside, and in a winding apartment the main character Colin lives. He is of considerable means, slightly neurotic, an inventor on the side, his doorbell splits into several tiny versions of itself and runs up and down the walls until he pays attention, his shoes tap their way to the door and beat on it like a dog about to be taken for a walk then, when he realises he's forgotten something, they escape and he has to chase them down the stairs. He is watched over by a tiny man in a mouse costume and his flatmate Nicolas, a trained lawyer who prefers the work of a chef and acts as a sort of butler come womaniser, constantly speaking in the third person and preparing sprawling meals, in one case live eels that disappear into taps and continually poke their heads out like a Whac-A-Mole game. Colin's best friend however is Chick, a poorer but happy man taken with the philosopher, writer and personality Jean-Sol Partre, author of the novel Stench (ho-ho), and in love with the wonderful Alise. Bothered by his status as the only single one of the group Colin is invited to a party for a pet dog and introduced to Chloe, who just happens to share the name of his favourite song. Within minutes their limbs stretch and become rubbery and they perform a physiology defying dance known as the Bigeloi. Soon they marry and Colin gifts Chick with enough money to allow he and Alise to have a wedding of their own. In this version of life the main aspiration is kinship although prosperity comes a close second. But quietly things grow darker and surprisingly pessimistic as the sky is turned black by nitric acid, people's standards are determined by a tape-measure, shadows lag behind their owners and are run over, Colin's chic flat encloses and dilapidates, the mouse breaks his arm trying to help the sunlight get in, Chick's obsession with Partre threatens to take over his existence and his relationship with Alise, hearts are wrenched out, love and money become both a goal and the cause of misery, Chloe is struck down with a most uncommon illness and the formally wealthy Colin has to take a series of Kafka-esque jobs from cackling under-managers to support her. In one he has to lay naked on a mound of soil for 24 hours at a time, the human warmth assisting the growth of guns, while another is a bureaucratic role visiting people and giving them bad news in advance so they can plan for it and avoid panic. A third is the oddest and the most pointless as Colin starts work on an assembly line narrating his own existence on typewriters that pass swiftly from person to person. The cinema of Terry Gilliam is a good reference point as is Nikolai Gogol as indeed are Duke Ellington and the psychedelic 1970's children's programme Crystal Tipps and Alistair. Playing the main couple are the versatile Romain Duris and Audrey Tautou at her finest, simultaneously playful, sexy, adorable and melancholic, reeling off the beaucoups with delight with notable support from the exceptional Senegalese actress Aïssa Maïga (look up her back catalogue forthwith), Gad Elmaleh, Omar Sy and even Gondry himself as a strangely-behaved but well-thought-of doctor called Mangemanche. Gondry's mixture of innovation and pop-culture is as ever accomplished but dizzying and he appears to have been let off the leash more than ever before meaning that his all-in creativity simply becomes too much and at times overpowers the story. In the past I've seem films of a similarly anarchic and fanciful style and immediately wanted to watch them again but I fear that if I tried that here I'd become nauseous through the sheer weight of invention. A gorgeously dark fairytale that clings to the mind a little too much.
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