The Science of Sleep

The Science of Sleep (French: La Science des rêves, literally The Science of Dreams) is a 2006 Franco–Italian surrealistic science fantasy comedy film written and directed by Michel Gondry. Starring Gael García Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Miou-Miou and Alain Chabat, the film stems from a bedtime story written by Sam Mounier,[3][4] then 10 years old.

This article is about the film. For scientific information about sleep, see Sleep.
The Science of Sleep
Theatrical release poster
Directed byMichel Gondry
Produced byGeorges Bermann
Written byMichel Gondry
StarringGael García Bernal
Charlotte Gainsbourg
Miou-Miou
Alain Chabat
Music byJean-Michel Bernard
CinematographyJean-Louis Bompoint
Edited byJuliette Welfling
Production
company
Distributed byGaumont (France)
Release date
  • 16 August 2006 (2006-08-16) (France)
  • 26 January 2007 (2007-01-26) (Italy)
Running time
106 minutes
CountryFrance
Italy
LanguageEnglish
French
Spanish
Budget$6 million[1]
Box office$15.3 million[2]

Plot

Stéphane Miroux, played by Gael García Bernal, is a shy and insecure young man whose vivid dreams and imagination often interfere with his ability to interact with reality. After the death of his divorced father in Mexico, Stéphane agrees to come to Paris to live closer to his widowed mother Christine. Shortly after he is coaxed back to his childhood home, his mother finds him a job in a calendar printing company in France. Stéphane prepares his colourful drawings after being told by his mother that the position at the new job is a creative role. Stéphane's colourful drawings each consist of a disaster, for his newest invention: a "disasterology" calendar". However, nobody at his new job appreciates his talents and it transpires that his mother had led him on - the real vacancy is for nothing more than mundane typesetting work, leaving Stéphane at an uncreative and colorless new job.

While leaving his apartment to go to work one day, Stéphane offers help to his neighbor moving a piano into her apartment. Due to lack of strength and masculinity, Stéphane injures his hand. The new neighbor, Stéphanie, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, invites Stéphane into her apartment (unaware that he lives next door) where her friend Zoé tends to his wound. While getting his hand taken care of, Stéphane initially forms an attraction to Zoé, though he suspects it is instead Stéphanie who likes him.

Soon, Stéphane realizes that Stéphanie, like him, is creative and artistic. They plan a project for use in a short animated film. Following the advice of Guy, Stéphane's sex-obsessed co-worker played by Alain Chabat, Stéphane pretends that he isn't Stéphanie's neighbor, pretending to leave the building when he leaves her apartment. Later that night, when he is sleepwalking he writes a confusing note to Stéphanie that asks for Zoé's phone number. Soon after Stéphane wakes back into consciousness, he realizes his mistake and quickly comes up with a plan to retrieve the note. He finds his best option and retrieves the letter with a coat hanger, unaware that Stéphanie has already read the note.

As the story begins to unfold, surrealistic and naturalistic elements begin to overlap within Stéphane's reality, and the viewer is often uncertain of which portions constitute reality and which are merely dreams. One such sequence, in which Stéphane dreams his hands become absurdly giant, was inspired by a recurring nightmare director Michel Gondry had as a child.[5] As this line gradually becomes more blurred, Stéphane becomes more enamoured with Stéphanie the more he spends time with her and shares his many inventions with her, such as the "one-second time machine," a device that can go either forward or backward in time by only one second. Stéphane's dreams encroach on his waking life as he tries to win Stéphanie's heart and misses time at work. He breaks into her apartment, taking her stuffed toy horse, and implants a mechanism inside of it that will make it gallop. While putting it back into her apartment, Stéphanie arrives and catches him, demanding he leaves and becoming more upset with him. Embarrassed and heartbroken, Stéphane retreats to his own apartment where he receives a call from Stéphanie, who apologizes and thanks him for the gift she discovers: a galloping version of "Golden the Pony Boy," who she reveals was named after Stéphane.

As the months go by, waking and dreaming become even more intermixed. To Stéphane's surprise, the calendar manufacturer accepts his "Disasterology" idea and it becomes a great success. The company decides to have a party in his honour, but he becomes depressed and begins drinking excessively after he witnesses Stéphanie dancing flirtatiously with another man. The next day, Stéphane and Stéphanie have a confrontation in their hallway when Stéphane announces that he doesn't want to be Stéphanie's friend any longer. Stéphanie becomes very upset, offering Zoé's phone number and reciting Stéphane's note. Stéphane, still unaware that Stéphanie has read the note, assumes that they are connected through "Parallel Synchronized Randomness", a rare phenomenon he has examined in his dreams. Stéphanie offers that they discuss their issues on a date, but on Stéphane's walk to the café to meet her, he has a frightful vision that she isn't there and she doesn't love him after all. Out of fear and anxiety due to the intermixed reality and dream, he runs back to her apartment and bangs on her door, demanding that she stop torturing him; in actuality, she is indeed waiting for him at the café. Stéphane runs at her door, attempting to break it down, but winds up bashing his head and collapsing in the hall, where his mother eventually finds him bleeding. Tired of waiting, Stéphanie returns home while Stéphane, coaxed by his mother and her friend, decides to move back to Mexico. Before leaving, Stéphane's mother insists that he says a formal goodbye to his next door neighbor, Stéphanie. In his attempt to do so, he becomes extremely crass, making sexual and offensive jokes to her, and accusing her of never being able to finish something she starts. However, he reveals that he is truly interested in her because she's different from other people. As his antagonistic behavior pushes her to her breaking point, Stéphanie asks Stéphane to leave but he instead climbs into her bed and yells at her, before spotting two items on her bedside: his one-second time machine, and the finished boat they had planned to use in their animated film. Stéphane falls asleep in Stéphanie's bed. As she checks on him to see why he has become so quiet, she gently strokes his hair. The film closes with Stéphane and Stéphanie riding Golden the Pony Boy across a field before sailing off into the ocean's horizon in her white boat. [5]

Cast
  • Gael García Bernal as Stéphane Miroux, a shy and creative young man who recently moves to Paris to accompany his recently widowed mother. His mother gets him a job at a calendar printing company in France. Over time he becomes interested into his next door neighbor, Stéphanie, who is also a creative and artistic individual like himself.
  • Charlotte Gainsbourg as Stéphanie, a young and pretty lady who is also Stéphane's next door neighbor. Throughout the story, she builds a connection with Stéphane, who often fails her due to his foggy perception of reality.
  • Miou-Miou as Christine Miroux, a recently widowed woman who is the mother of Stéphane Miroux. She is the landlord of Stéphane's neighbor, Stéphanie.
  • Alain Chabat as Guy, Stéphane's sex obsessed co worker, who often gives Stéphane bad advice.
  • Emma de Caunes as Zoé, Stéphanie's roommate who Stéphane initially finds attraction to.
  • Sacha Bourdo as Serge, Stéphane's co-worker at the calendar printing company.
  • Aurélia Petit as Martine, Stéphane's co-worker at the calendar printing company.
  • Pierre Vaneck as Monsieur Pouchet

Production

Information

  • The film was written and directed by Michel Gondry, and this film marked Gondry's third feature film.
  • Produced by Georges Bermann, Michel Gondry, and Frédéric Junqua.
  • Cinematography by Jean-Louis Bompoint, who is also known for doing cinematography for The Thorn in the Heart (2009) and New York, I Love You (2008).
  • Composed by Jean-Michel Bernard
  • Budget: $6,000,000
  • Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1
  • Negative Format: 35 mm (Fuji Eterna 500T 8573)
  • Film Length: 2,925 m (Portugal, 35 mm)
  • Shot on Spherical Lens
  • Printed Film Format: 35mm

Locations

'The Science of Sleep was shot in 4 primary locations, all in France.

  • Chérence, Val-d'Oise, France
  • Forges, Orne, France
  • Paris 18, Paris, France
  • Paris, France

Reception

The Science of Sleep received generally favorable reviews. It holds a 71% approval rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes,[6] a 7.3/10 on IMDb as well as a 70 out of 100 on Metacritic.[7] Michel Gondry's previous film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, did relatively better (8.3/10 on IMDb, 93% Rotten Tomatoes, 89% Metacritic), and has gained a wide pool of fans, while The Science of Sleep remains to be one of Michel Gondry's lesser known works.

Box Office

The Science of Sleep was released on September 22, 2006 and remained in theaters until December 21, 2006. The film was distributed by Warner Independent Pictures. Domestically, in North America, the film grossed around 4.6 million USD. The film did relatively better internationally, where it grossed 10.4 million USD. Worldwide, The Science of Sleep grossed roughly 15.2 M USD.

Critics Review

In a New York Times article by A.O. Scott, an American journalist and cultural critic, describes the film as "profoundly idiosyncratic" and "so confident in its oddity" that any attempt to describe and explain the film would be misleading. He later states, "What I'm trying to say is that "The Science of Sleep," for all its blithe disregard of the laws of physics, film grammar and narrative coherence, strikes me as perfectly realistic, as authentic a slice of life as I've encountered on screen in quite some time." Scott argues that the film's loose connection of events and misleading narrative are appropriate for its themes: "Plot summary, therefore, is both irrelevant and impossible. Which is not to say that the movie lacks a story, only that, like a dream, the narrative moves sideways as well as forward, revising and contradicting itself as it goes along. Mr. Gondry, who would rather invent than explain, makes a plausible case that a love story (which is what "The Science of Sleep" is) cannot really be told any other way. Love is too bound up with memories, fantasies, projections and misperceptions to conform to a conventional, linear structure." [8]

Many other critics have stated that the films plot is hard to understand, but Michel Gondry's grasp of emotions and visuals is what makes the story unique and profound.[9]

Awards

Soundtrack
Main article: The Science of Sleep (soundtrack)

The score to The Science of Sleep was composed by Jean-Michel Bernard. Jean-Michel Bernard is a French pianist, composer, educator, orchestrator, and music producer. He is also well known for regularly writing, performing, and scoring for films, such as Hugo, Paris-Manhattan, Ca$h, and Be Kind Rewind. The song "Instinct Blues" by The White Stripes is used in the film but was not included on the soundtrack release.[10] The song "If You Rescue Me", played by a band of people dressed as cats in a dream sequence, has the melody of the song "After Hours" by the Velvet Underground but with different lyrics.

Influences

Jungian Psychology As the film The Science of Sleep constantly jumps back and forth from Stéphane's reality, dream, consciousness, and subconsciousness, the film has taken much influences from Psychology, Jungian Psychology specifically, or also known as Analytical Psychology. The name was given by a Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, who wanted to distinguish his studies from Freud's psychoanalytic theories.

The use of psychological archetypes was advanced by Jung in 1919. In Jung's psychological framework, archetypes are innate, universal prototypes for ideas and may be used to interpret observations. A group of memories and interpretations associated with an archetype is a complex, e.g. a mother complex associated with the mother archetype. Jung treated the archetypes as psychological organs, analogous to physical ones in that both are morphological givens that arose through evolution.[11][12]

See also

References
  1. "Science des rêves, La (2006) - Box office / business". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2007-06-07.
  2. "The Science of Sleep (2006)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 7 June 2007.
  3. "Unsung Films". Unsung Films Blog. Retrieved 26 July 2007.
  4. "To Tony Productions". Daniel Hess. Retrieved 26 July 2007.
  5. https://exploringyourmind.com/the-science-of-sleep-the-film/
  6. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_science_of_sleep/
  7. "The Science of Sleep Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved March 30, 2017.
  8. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/movies/22slee.html
  9. https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/science-sleep-review/
  10. "Science des rêves, La (2006) - Soundtracks". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 7 June 2007.
  11. https://www.psychologistworld.com/cognitive/carl-jung-analytical-psychology
  12. https://www.simplypsychology.org/carl-jung.html
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