"In dreams, emotions are overwhelming," says Stephane (Gael Garcia Bernal), the eccentric protagonist of The Science of Sleep. His statement is a definite truism, one that has baffled well-meaning filmmakers since Un Chien Andalou first dispensed with narrative cause-and-effect. How to represent a dream state without letting the audience float off into the ether?
Enter Michel Gondry. The music-video auteur (his retrospective DVD is absolutely essential) proved his feature-length mettle with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and follows it up here with a similarly psycho-romantic journey through a jungle of altered states. But this time, operating without a Charlie Kaufman guidebook, Gondry lets his subjectivity run amok, resulting in the year's most delirious, most surrealistic, most inventive film.
Parallel synchronized randomness — an actual term from the script — is the rule of the day here, in a story that follows a childish amateur inventor's attempt to bridge fantasy and reality, and maybe discover true love across the hall. Any further plot description would prove enormously reductive, as Gondry sacrifices coherence for the sake of astounding papier-mache set pieces and unfettered whimsy. The entire set design is rigorously anachronistic, a world that mirrors a young boy's bedroom, circa 1985.
Gael Garcia Bernal deserves a special award for fearlessness; he abandons himself completely to the highs and lows of Stephane's sociopathic emotions. As one character puts it, he has "leaped forward into absurdity." Thanks to The Science of Sleep, so have we all.
— Akiva Gottlieb