Michel Gondry, the director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and less memorably Human Nature, sets out to demonstrate he can be just as wacky and braintwisty without Charlie Kaufman as his scriptwriter, with, instead, only himself as scriptwriter. The blur of dream and reality demonstrates that, all right, but at a cost of increased tedium and irritation. (An unsteady hand-held camera no doubt factors into the cost.) The dream scenes, incorporating a variety of animation techniques, are inventive, intelligent, informed, yet also invariably overstuffed, and not just in the literal sense of the stop-motion straw pony or the plump pillow typewriter. The wispy plot thread has to do with the amorous hankering of a graphic artist and crackpot inventor (mind-reading helmets, time machine, and the like) for his next-door neighbor, a twosome seemingly made for each other: Stéphane and Stéphanie. Gael García Bernal and Charlotte Gainsbourg have little room to exert their charms. We know they have them. With Alain Chabat, Miou-Miou. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd
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