Dream on

Any day now, Michel Gondry will be releasing his new movie, The Science of Sleep - which is a follow-up to 2004's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Judging by the press release, it has echoes of Gondry's previous movie, which explored the nature of memory (albeit Jim Carrey's memory - a very scary prospect indeed). Here's what the handout says:

Life seems to be looking up for shy and withdrawn Stephane when he returns to his childhood home with the promise of a great job. Wildly creative, his fanciful and sometimes disturbing dream life constantly threatens to usurp his waking world. While the job fails to meet expectations, he does strike up a relationship with his neighbor, Stephanie. As their connection blossoms, the confidence he exudes in his fanciful dream life begins bleeding into his real life.

Visually, it's bound to be stunning. Gondry has explored this territory before in the video for the Foo Fighter's Everlong - in which a man saves his girlfriend from a nightmare.

I'm not so sure about the film's story, though. Gondry has written this film by himself - and, although he worked on the script for Eternal Sunshine, it seems likely that the accessibility of that (admittedly weird) screenplay was mainly due to co-writer Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation). It’s quite possible that without his steady hand the new film will be a little too fanciful and/or complex. The problem is that any film containing a scene where "An electric shaver becomes huge and shaves everything in sight" can only be explosively brilliant or eye-gougingly awful. There is no middle ground here.

Well, now you have a chance to make an early decision: some kind soul has posted a clip of the film on Youtube. Have a look before the evil copyright lawyers take it down…

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