Movie Review: The Science of Sleep

Don't bother wearing socks when you watch The Science of Sleep, because this movie will charm them right off. The story careens between dreams and reality with head-spinning gusto. One moment, Gael Garcia Bernal is talking to the camera in a television studio made entirely from cardboard (even the cameras), and the next moment he's stumbling down a Parisian sidewalk in a half-awake daze. Reality is no less strange than the dreamworld, and there might be a deeper meaning a-brew there, but the movie doesn't put any pressure on itself to actually, you know, make sense. It's like Inception as a sweet-natured but prickly romantic comedy, populated not by shadowy corporate dream-pirates but by awkward young lovers who can't figure out if their connection is real or imaginary. Charlotte Gainsbourg is the perfect foil for Garcia Bernal, with her standoffishness and vulnerability bristling against his naivety and obnoxiousness. They seem at once perfect for one another and bound for disaster as they circle around flirtations and arguments--all of it feeding back and distorting in ultra-vivid, cardboard-and-green-screen dreams. Written and directed by Michel Gondry, The Science of Sleep is itself a dream you don't want to wake up from, and when you do, you have no chance of explaining it to anyone in a way that will make sense.