Dreaming in the joys of night. Little sorrows sit and weep.
Freud would have had a field day with Stéphane Miroueux. The childlike protagonist of
The Science of Sleep
comes from a broken home, is in love with a girl who reminds him of his dead father and is completely preoccupied with the juxtaposition of his dreams with reality. An artist and inventor of extraordinary creativity, Stéphane, played by Gael García Bernal, moves next door to the lovely and equally talented
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Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg). The parallels between them extend far beyond their names, enveloping the pair in a psychedelic, often uncomfortable, love story straight from the id of Michel Gondry, the playful auteur of
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
.
Stéphane reveals the inner workings of his subconscious through a makeshift variety show reminiscent of
Pee-wee's Playhouse
. He dons a slightly shrunken suit (his uniform in waking life as well), plays his own theme song and addresses an imaginary world that kowtows to his every whim. A cardboard studio is a replication of his mind, with two screens where eyes would be. The creatures in his world are common household items or felt animals, brought to life through stop-motion animation. He concocts his nocturnal musings like a demented chef, combining a bottle of random thoughts with a pinch of events or sautéing a picture of his father with onions. The effect is a dizzying stylistic cross between '70s Euro sitcoms and Saturday morning cartoons.
The ingenuous nature and bad French of Bernal's Stéphane endear him immediately to the sensible and unpretentious Stéphanie, played with effortless charm by Gainsbourg. When he presents a pair of glasses he's invented to make life appear in 3-D, she replies simply, "But isn't life already in 3-D?" She can't resist trying them on anyway and gushes, "It's true; they're fun!" She in turn is a toymaker, creating worlds with her hands that Stéphane can only conceive in his mind. He helps her build a boat, and suddenly cellophane is coming out of the water faucet and mounds of cotton are suspended in the air. In a perfect world these two would live happily ever after, but in the disjointed world of Stéphane's mind, things just aren't what they seem.
At first Stéphane isn't even attracted to Stéphanie. He tells a friend she reminds him of his father and ends up in the arms of another woman. His father, however, was his best friend, and soon thoughts of Stéphanie invade his dreams. His trio of co-workers, comprised of an effeminate man, a pseudo-attractive blonde professional and a middle-aged delinquent, act as a chorus inside and outside Stéphane's head. In the office they try to help him, giving him advice in English and then bemoaning his situation in French. In the dream world he sleeps with the blonde, takes over the office and gives them all ruling counsel. His
anxiety over Stéphanie begins to blur the line between his sleeping and
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waking life. He writes Stéphanie a note while asleep in the bathtub and slips it under her door only to wake up in horror and retrieve it.
Bernal arrestingly conveys the intricacies of immaturity. Like a stubborn child, when Stéphane's dreams don't go his way he becomes maniacal, instilling fear to elicit respect from his peers. While still asleep he dresses for work and walks out the door, where he sees Stéphanie and immediately proposes marriage. She declines his advances and Stéphane, now fully awake and burned by rejection, yells at her.
What at first appears as an endearing connection to his limitless imagination becomes a disturbing and tragic misconstruing of thoughts and emotions. When running to meet Stéphanie for their first date, he is driven away by shouts telling him of his worthlessness. Led astray by his own fear of rejection, he imagines that she had no intention of meeting him and blames her. Such is the tragedy of being seduced by reverie and missing one's life.
