Although Cinderella once claimed that ""a dream is a wish your heart makes,"" most of us can attest that it is rarely that simple. Though it may still be an over-simplification of a complex process, Stephane, the hero of Michel Gondry's ""The Science of Sleep,"" may have the recipe more correct. ""Dreams,"" he claims, are among other things ""memories of the day, love, friendships and relationships."" It is the jumble of these that make up our dreams, and make going to sleep such an adventure.
""The Science of Sleep"" is a film about a man living between the two worlds of sleep and awake. By day, Stephane (Gael Garcia Bernal), is a man-child working a boring job at a calendar company. But by night, Stephane fulfills his life's fantasies and innermost desires in his dreams. Both worlds are turned upside-down when he falls for his neighbor, Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), an attractive songwriter. The film follows Stephane as he yearns for Stephanie in both his waking hours and his fantasy world, which often intersect in strange and interesting ways.
The film succeeds on the strength of Bernal and Gainsbourg. Garcia Bernal is a man trapped in a boy's world, sleeping in his boyhood room, playing the way an imaginative child would play. He approaches the role with wide-eyed enthusiasm. Gainsbourg counters this with Stephanie's realistic view of the world, and this film is also about the two trying to find a middle ground between their personalities.
Gondry, best known for his superb direction in ""Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,"" has once again created a piece of film art. Though working with a small budget, the film uses those constraints to its advantage; rather than trying to create large, unrealistic set pieces that would ultimately disappoint, Gondry uses their obvious cheapness to create a visual style of Stephane's dreams that remains consistent throughout the film. Rather than making Stephane's dream studio look like a cheap set, the studio is in fact made entirely of cardboard. The film is beautifully crafted and wondrous to watch despite not having state-of-the-art effects.
Where the film is weakest is in its writing. Though each scene of the film is uniquely staged, they often don't transition or fit together well and leave the viewer a little confused in the end. Though much of the confusion is intentional—Gondry forces the viewer to question which scenes are dreams and which are real—it is also annoying while watching the movie unfold.
Combined with a sometimes-cluttered voice track, the film is at times hard to follow. ""Science"" is one of the year's most original films and stunning to watch. But to actually take anything away from it, viewers must be willing to wade through a very dense and challenging film with few easy answers and more than its share of confusion.
""The Science of Sleep,"" much like the dreams that it chronicles, is beautiful and moving despite the confusion of the moment. But, like most other dreams, when the lights come up and the viewers walk away, they will have loved the experience even if they still don't quite understand everything that they've seen and heard.
