Mood Indigo (Michel Gondry)

johnny_ultimate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkgtLs0W8SI

Michel Gondry's output post-Science of Sleep (arguably even post-ESOTSM) has been consistently disheartening. If ever there was a director whose talent was going to waste in studio films...

But this looks really interesting - at least visually its full of the imaginative effects Gondry made his name with. The concept is quirktastic - Audrey Tautou plays a woman with a water lily growing in her lungs, and her husband (Romain Duris) tries to save her. Mental concept, but if anyone has the stylistic wizardry to pull it off, it's Gondry.

Too early to get too excited, and there's still the potential for this to be beyond twee. But here's hoping this is the next mad, moving spectacle that Gondry undoubtedly has in him.

Sad Professor

Yeah, might me good. I can watch Tautou in just about anything.

I'm not sure about Romain Duris though. I saw him in The Big Picture last year and found him quite annoying.

johnny_ultimate

You're not the first person I've heard complain about Romain Duris, but TBH I haven't seen him in a film for a few years! Think Dans Paris may have been the last...

Tautou is a charismatic screen presence but boy she picks some awful films.

Mickeroo

Well at least it looks like a Gondry movie. I didn't mind Be Kind Rewind too much but Green Hornet was a huge let down, hope he's back to his best with this.

Seems that Gondry's The We and the I has gone under everyone's radar. The trailer is hardly inspiring, it looks cheap and the acting doesn't appear to be up to much but considering it began as part of an after school program that Gondry was involved in you can easily forgive those flaws. Hopefully between The We and the I and Mood Indigo, Gondry can make up for the truly terrible Green Hornet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE0jTAEjNlY

Looper007

Have to say I was slightly disappointed with this, style over substance and along with The Green Hornet it's his weakest to date. I seriously wanted to like this aside from Some beautiful images, l won't knock Gondry about his eye for the surreal and the wonderful (the dancing scenes, the inside of Duris character's flat and Duris and Tautou first date). But I came out of this not feeling anything for the Duris (always great not one of his best performances though) or Tautou (she was seriously under used in this, she's never topped her performance in Amelie) characters especially

The ending when Tautou character dies and Duris is left a broken man

.


I feel Gondry needs a scriptwriter tough enough to sit him down to tell him what will work and what won't work to add a bit of substance to his work, that's why Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Charlie Kaufman's wonderful screenplay is his best Film by a country mile. Although I admire the underrated work like Be Kind Rewind and The Science of Sleep, his work lack's something that fellow music video directors turned Film Directors like Spike Jonze and Jonathan Glazer who films make you go back and want to rewatch.

No means a disaster, just rather a decent work that sadly won't live long in the memory.

By the way why is the film cut down from nearly two hours to an hour and a half?

Fysh

I really liked this, I felt that after the one-hand-behind-his-back nature of Be Kind Rewind, Mood Indigo feels like a return to the kind of form last exemplified in The Science Of Sleep. (I skipped Green Hornet as it just didn't look interesting to me). It helps that the cast seem to have a good chemistry and are evidently having fun, particularly in segments like the dance scenes or the church race. The character arc for Colin & Chloe reminded me somewhat of The Wind Rises, and like that film at least part of the joy was seeing the world in which the characters exist.

I think Gondry is similar to Wes Anderson or Terry Gilliam in that his films are at least as much about mood and visuals as they are about character, and in some ways they're all the same film (all about relationships with bittersweet endings). For me at least the enjoyment of his films is more about how he shows certain scenes and the way he incorporates dreamlike sequences into the narrative than anything else. I enjoy the fact that there's the feeling of a distinct personality at work, particularly at a time of year when a lot of theatrical releases can feel like they hew very closely to a template.

Fysh

While trying to find out what was trimmed from the original French cut for the UK/US release I found this Indiewire article which makes the case for the trimmed version being a better film. Having not seen both, I can't comment - but I can certainly imagine that a lot of viewers might find a longer, more indulgent cut frustrating, given some of the responses to the shorter cut.

I'd be curious to see the cut material given that it appears to have been fully realised rather than being cut before going to post-production - hopefully it'll get included in the home media release.

johnny_ultimate

Watched this today and I think the biggest problem with is the lack of a consistent internal logic. Science of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine had all sorts of wild visual flights of fancy, but they were all tied to a specific vision - the oddness was always motivated. Here everything goes: that leads to some memorable imagery and creative indulgences, but it's at the cost of consistency. It never settled into a credible world IMO, merely an excuse for whatever zaniness Gondry and his team wanted to get on screen. It's easy to appreciate the sheer wild energy of Gondry's creation, but at times it's more like a sizzle reel than an actual whole film.

It doesn't help that the film lacks both pace and interesting characterisation - a whole lot of the film is simply a random cluster**** of stuff, and it's hard to care.

Nonetheless, I found myself warming to it a bit as it went on after feeling cold and removed for much of the first hour. The 'consumptive wife' plot is as old as some very old hills (a whimsical change to the specifics of the disease only makes a minor difference), but I found myself impressed by how Gondry lures us into this shallow, bubblegum world only to slowly transform it into an utterly bleak one.

The drainage of colour happens subtly at first, and as it continues along those lines it's as if the visual have finally found that motivation they needed. The ending genuinely caught me off guard, for both good and bad - part of me went 'is that it?!', while another was impressed that Gondry opted to end on such a dispiriting note.

Looper007

Sad Professor wrote: »

Yeah, might me good. I can watch Tautou in just about anything.

I'm not sure about Romain Duris though. I saw him in The Big Picture last year and found him quite annoying.

I'm the other way round, Duris is a great actor still don't think he's been in as good a film as the beat that my heart skipped or topped that performance. But he was the better out of the two leads in Mood Indigo but I can see why many don't think the way I do about him.

Tautou for me hasn't ever topped Amelie for me, it's overshadowed her for me. I never forgive her for her for her woeful performance in The Da Vinci Code.