Mood Indigo ***
If incredibly imagination alone were the key to a successful film, then writer-director Michel Gondry’s L’écume des jours or Mood Indigo would be a guaranteed box-office smash. It’s like an animated delicacy that ignites the creative juices with every scene, beautifully crafted to help tell a delicate story of loss. However, as much as fans of Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, La science des rêves) will revel in his trademark surrealism and visual effects once more, the storyline is a little lacking in substance and doesn’t appear to translate as well from Boris Vian’s heart-felt 1947 novel about losing a great love (translated as Froth on the Daydream and Foam of the Daze).
Wealthy, inventive bachelor Colin (Romain Duris) has everything he has ever asked for and is financially comfortable. What he doesn’t have is someone to share it with – until he meets Chloé (Audrey Tautou) at a friend’s party and they fall in love. Everything is peachy until the couple marry and go away on honeymoon. The first night Chloé contracts an unusual illness overnight – caused by a flower growing in her lungs. Their idyll is rudely broken as Colin endeavours to find a cure before it’s too late while trying to avoid financial ruin.
Gondry sets the scene and the appetite for some zany antics perfectly, with the animation quenching the senses and thrilling all who take it in. His cast of Duris and the ever-delightful ‘dolly-like’ Tautou are made for his films, both never failing to deliver here. In fact, the show-stealing character is Omar Sy as Colin’s right-hand-man, Nicolas, who pulls the whole narrative together when it veers off on an indulgent Gondry tangent.
In terms of wackiness that always goes hand in hand with a touching sensitivity to the characters’ mood moment, one of the most memorable scenes is Colin taking Chloé on a ‘cloud capsule ride’ over an apparent building site on their first date. It’s sheer brilliance of quirky imagination as they take in their surroundings (and each other).
However, as the ‘illness’ of the growing flower progresses – that appears to be a metaphor for lung cancer, the story seems to subside, as if getting lost in the enveloping darkness that the production takes. Whether there is not enough relationship development to begin with to really get a sense of how deep Colin and Chloé’s love for each other is, or the written word just gets lost in translation as the creativity takes over, who knows, but we feel the depressed pet mouse’s gloom at what should be a momentous time.
Still, there is always the hilariously funny dance move that involves bandy legs and arms to enjoy and the introduction of the ‘pianocktail’ that would make a grand central party piece, though whether there is enough to entice anyone who is not a Gondry fan to pay to see Mood Indigo on the big screen is debatable, however creative he gets and charming Duris and Tautou are.
3/5 stars
By @FilmGazer
