Director: Michel Gondry | France | Fiction | 2013 | 94 mins
Film source: Drafthouse
Sponsor: Lyric Theater
From Méliès to the Brothers Quay, cinema has produced a number of remarkable movie magicians – directors who revel in the art of illusion, the use of in-camera trickery and sleight of sight; fabulists who unlock the fantastical possibilities of film. Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; The Science of Sleep) is one of these magicians, and his latest offering provides ample evidence of his innovation and mastery of the low-fi, high-effect F/X. Adapting Boris Vian’s novel, Froth on the Daydream, Gondry concocts a vivid, beguiling tale of love, idealism, invention, and loss. Starring Romain Duris (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) as rich, idiosyncratic gadabout Colin and Audrey Tatou (Amélie; Dirty Pretty Things) as Chloe, the one who sets Colin aglow, the film’s romantic story – full of all the whimsy, elation, anxiety, and tragedy that love entails – perfectly matches Gondry’s heightened-sensory approach to filmmaking. Visually stunning and endlessly surprising, Mood Indigo is a delirious and rewarding flight of fancy from a magician in top form.
