Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that this arty French film consists mostly of fanciful/dream-like scenes that can seem nonsensical and lack a clear narrative drive. (In other words, kids won't be clamoring to see it.) There's some slapstick violence (falls and fisticuffs with enlarged hands), and Stéphane draws "disaster" images for the calendar company where he works (which also produces calendars featuring naked women). The movie includes brief shots of Stéphane naked in a bathtub and emerging to don a robe. But his desire for Stéphanie is rendered metaphorically, in dreamy images of heroic feats and horseback riding. Characters smoke cigarettes and drink at a party. Some profanity.
Families can discuss the nature of dreams. What do dreams "mean"? Is it possible to interpret them definitively? How do they convey unconscious or submerged desires and fears? Why don't we remember more of our dreams? How does Stéphane "act out" his anxieties in his dreams?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs
THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP doesn't tell a story so much as it unravels. A journey through a young man's dreams and desires, it's at once lyrical, strange, and resistant to interpretation. While this untraditional structure will frustrate some viewers, it's also enchanting and challenging, a movie that takes a mature, complex perspective on childish behavior and the culture that encourages it.
Following the loss of his father to cancer, Stéphane (Gael García Bernal) travels from Mexico to Paris, where he intends to sort through his family's old apartment. This rummaging brings back memories of his childhood, memories that Stéphane tends to arrange in his head in his own way (including remembering conversations with his parents on a TV talk show set made of cardboard).
Stéphane is perpetually "creative": When his mother, Miou-Miou (Christine Miroux) arranges a job at a company that makes naked-girl calendars, Stéphane arrives with his own designs for a 12-month cycle -- a series of drawings of disasters (a Mexican earthquake in September 1985, the loss of TWA Flight 800 in July 1996). As he puts it, "each month has its own most disastrous event."
Stéphane's own disaster in the making concerns his crush on new neighbor Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who is also artistically inclined (she makes dioramas with cellophane seas and cotton ball clouds). The film follows Stéphane's efforts to solicit her romantic interest, although she's repeatedly put off by his seemingly incoherent action -- the result of the fact that he finds it difficult to differentiate between his dreams and his waking life.
Written and directed by the ever-inventive Michel Gondry, The Science of Sleep is a gorgeous, eccentric, and decidedly odd movie. In particular, it offers up a protagonist who resists conventional identification: While Stéphane is undoubtedly charming, he's also difficult, unable or unwilling to adjust his view of the world in order to accommodate those around him.
But if the character of Stéphane is disquieting, the movie's exploration of his individual psyche is endlessly fascinating. The fact that The Science of Sleep doesn't come together in a pat resolution, but rather opens out into more possibilities -- romantic, scary, and new -- only makes it more adventurous.
Fans will also like Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Human Nature, as well as the many music videos he's made for artists like The White Stripes, Beck, and Bjork).
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentThe protagonist works in an office that produces "nudie" calendars (brief glimpse of a couple of photos, some cartoonish, imagined sexual activity involving office workers); he appears in bathtub, then naked as he puts on a robe (his bottom/back is shown briefly); office workers discuss sexual desire; reference to blow job. |
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ViolenceSlapsticky and hallucinatory violence, including a piano carried on a stairway that falls onto the protagonist (causing a sprained arm); a bump on the head that produces blood; Stéphane's childlike calendar drawings depict disasters (plane explosion, earthquake); an antic "fight" with oversized hands. |
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LanguageA couple of "f--k"s (in subtitles), plus other mild profanity ("merde," "a--hole") and jokey/disparaging use of "fags." |
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Social BehaviorThis is an extremely internal, subjective tale that emphasizes the protagonist's childish desires: He wants to be loved and nurtured, but he behaves selfishly and naively. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoSome cigarette smoking and some social drinking. |
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