Official Sites thescienceofsleep-movie.com (USA) ·· at Gaumont.com (Fr) ·· on MySpace ·· scienceofsleep.co.uk Release Dates Subject to change. Check local listings. UK ·· 16 Feb. 2007        Japan ··7 April 2007        Australia ·· 3 May 2007        more... Trailers & Clips USA: HD, hi, med, lo, podcast ·· French: large, moyen, petit, Fr/Eng mixed partizan.com (US) ·· gaumont.fr (Fr) Cast Gael García Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alain Chabat, Miou Miou, and Emma de Caunes, who was in Knives Out. Crew Writing ·· Michel Gondry    Cinematography ·· Jean-Louis Bompoint    Music ·· Jean-Michel Bernard    Editing ·· Juliette Welfling    Producers ·· Georges Bermann, Frédéric Junqua    more... Reviews ·· Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes Box Office courtesy Box Office Mojo Total: $13,147,259 as of 16 Mar. 2007 USA: $4,670,644 Elsewhere: $8,476,615 Your Comments on the Film Synopsis Michel Gondry's fourth feature is his baby, The Science of Sleep (La science des rêves). The film is in a way the penultimate Gondry production: all of the ideas and techniques he's used in his canon collide in what is a 100% Gondry film. It is also somewhat autobiographical, as written by Michel. The film is a mélange of sometimes-magical sequences that mix dreams with reality, and isn't entirely linear or plot-driven. But, anyway, here's the plot.. Stéphane (Gael García Bernal) is a shy young man who has just moved back to his childhood home in France from his home in Mexico, the birthplace of his deceased father. He goes to work at a novelty calendar company, but finds his job stifles his creativity. A cute and similarly creative young woman named Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg) moves across the hall from his apartment, and Stéphane soon finds himself attracted to her. His courtship of her becomes turbulent, as he has a hard time separating his dreams from reality. The film is part French and part English, and was filmed entirely in France - mainly in Paris in a house where Michel lived 15 years ago. It is similar in concept to Michel's Everlong video for the Foo Fighters. Michel shot animation for the film in France using a Bolex camera in July-August 2004. The film was shot in late 2004 to early 2005. Some of the props were hand-made by Lauri Faggioni. The film premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival on 22 Jan, where it was bought by Warner Independent Pictures for $6 million. Sleep also showed at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Seattle International Film Festival, the Moscow Film Festival, and Paris Cinéma. It was first released in France on 16 August, followed by a USA release on 22 September 2006. To promote Sleep, Michel, RES, Warner Independent Pictures, and Imeem collaborated on a community website called howdoyoudream.com. Inspired, again, by Michel's entire career, it's a place where users can come and post their dreams. Keywords in each entry spark a random image from the film. Here is the video blog. Similarly, the UK release prompted the creation of a DreamBlog, where people can chronicle their dreams using their mobile phone camera. To coincide with the American release of The Science of Sleep, Deitch Projects in New York City hosted an exhibition of sets from the film, titled The Science of Sleep: An exhibition of sculpture and pathological creepy little gifts. Lasting from 6 - 30 September 2006, the exhibition allowed people to immerse themselves in the sculptural experience of the movie in three dimensions. The sets are listed as "recreations," and include "a bedroom, office, TV station, cave, and creepy little gift room. This pink heart-like room will contain the creepy 'gifts' that Gondry makes for his muses, like the gifts the protagonist, Stéphane, makes for Stéphanie in the movie." Images from the installation and opening are here. Meanwhile, on 20 March 2007, a similar exposition opened at the Colette Gallery in Paris. Footage and pictures from that are here. The Science of Sleep soundtrack was released in America by Source/Astralwerks. It features songs and a Cannes-award winning score by Jean-Michel Bernard, including an excellent take on Lou Reed's "If You Rescue Me," a key song in the film. Other highlights include dreamy theme-ender "Golden the Pony Boy," and two tracks from The Willowz. You can listen to a few of these songs and watch some special clips at the soundtrack's MySpace page. The Science of Sleep was released on DVD in America on 6 February 2007. It features commentary by Michel, Gael García Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Sacha Bourdo, a "Making of," a featurette on Lauri Faggioni, Linda Serbu's "Rescue Me" music video, a Linda Serbu film called "Adopt Some Love," and the theatrical trailer. In France, Sleep was released on a two-disc, collectors edition DVD on 20 March 2007. Besides the same extras, it will include an apparent first: a completely new version of the film - a "Film B," which uses some of the many other scenes Michel & co. shot to create a whole new take of the film. Michel told Director File the entire package is "fantastic. Those guys at the video department at Gaumont (Sionia and Nicolas) are great." France will also receive the same versions of the film in Blu-ray on 6 June 2007. To promote this release, Michel came up with a short film called De-Blendex about a blender which re-constitutes objects from their shards. Here's the English version. News Archive (Relevant Items Only) 22 February 2007 VIDEO INTERVIEW Here's a video interview TimeOut London conducted with Michel recently, to promote The Science of Sleep. There's a 20-minute (phew!) version of the interview that screens alongside Sleep in Picturehouse cinemas across the UK. Call 08708 505703 or click on the link for more information. 17 February 2007 ANDPOP INTERVIEW andPOP has just posted an interview with Michel. As the premier cheerleader of Michel on the web (in America at least), I'm delighted and encouraged to hear things like this: "I think, in some ways now, I need to write my own material." And this: "Right now I'm really psyched about The Science of Sleep. It's very personal, it affects me." 14 February 2007 DREAMBLOG! - PLUS, SLEEP OPENS IN THE UK As the American release of The Science of Sleep saw the creation of howdoyoudream.com, so the UK release gets its own DreamBlog. (Announcer voice) DreamBlog! From the makers of moblogUK, the camera mobile phone blogging community site! At DreamBlog, you can blog your dreams using your mobile phone camera! Then watch other people's dreams and see how you compare! (Normal voice) Meanwhile, Sleep opens Friday in UK theatres: finally! Here's another Guardian interview with Michel, where he reveals some info about Eternal Sunshine's cast, among other things. And speaking of cast, Michel apparently wanted to initially cast Björk as Stéphanie in The Science of Sleep, or so says this Observer article. 10 February 2007 GUARDIAN INTERVIEW photo: Sarah Lee The Guardian has posted its lengthy interview with Michel that I mentioned a couple weeks ago. It was conducted last Wednesday, 7 Feb, in front of an audience after a screening of The Science of Sleep. It's one of the most lucid and revealing interviews of Michel I've ever read. He gives a very insightful response to how he views his work and particularly his feature films as they relate to his career. He compares The Science of Sleep to the "first album of a rock band. Let's say you sign the contract when you're 20 and you record the first album at 21 - you pour your whole existence between age 0 and 21, all jammed together, all the ideas that you accumulated, all come out in this first album. Then the second album is where you express all the thoughts between the first and second album, which may be about two years later." He also talks about Björk, friendships and his relationships with other directors. 27 January 2007 SCIENCE OF SLEEP IN UK, ITALY Finally, after months of being released in almost every other part of the globe, The Science of Sleep is making its way onto UK screens on 16 February. Warner has opened the official British Sleep site, which is as fun and charming as the original US website. If you are near London, you can see a screening of the film, followed by an interview of Michel conducted by the Guardian at the National Film Theatre, 6:30pm on 7 Feb. Tickets and more information are available here. Or you can win tickets to the event by simply giving the Guardian your phone number. Sweet! Also: Sleep just opened in theatres across Italy, but I have no news to go with that. Sorry! 11 January 2007 MICHEL WINS GOLDEN TOMATO AWARD Rotten Tomatoes, the movie review aggregator, has proclaimed Michel's The Science of Sleep the Best-Reviewed Romance of 2006. There's Michel himself holding his "precious," the Golden Tomato Award. His acceptance speech: "I am thrilled by this Rotten recognition of the critics. Although, one of them said I should not be allowed to hold a pen, so I wanted to know if I could be offered a Rotten Tomato pen as a trophy that I would gladly present to this critic to place in a not so romantic location." More about the awards here. 3 December 2006 SLEEP WINS EFA AWARD The Science of Sleep just won an award at the European Film Awards held in Warsaw. Pierre Pell and Stéphane Rozenbaum won for the fanciful, lo-fi, and museum-worthy setups (aka production design) they created for the film. 22 November 2006 DREAM DISCUSSION Recently Michel sat down with Harvard scholar Robert Stickgold, a preeminent sleep researcher, to discuss sleep and dreams, and, literally, The Science of Sleep, in an interview for Seed Magazine. During the 50 minute discussion, Robert calls Michel, rather comically, a Talmudic scholar, where there is no agreed-upon answer to things. See it here. 31 October 2006 A NOTE FROM MICHEL Over the course of the last year, Michel has done a lot of interviews for The Science of Sleep. Here he writes us a note about something he says he realized and forgot to mention. "I've read some times complaints about the construction (or non construction) of the story and i question myself about what construction or structure i was aiming for in this story. I'm not sure I was conscious of it while writing the film. It's clear that the movie follows the point of view of stéphane. Not the one of stéphanie. That's part of the suffering that's stéphane endures, not being able to know for sure what is going on in stéphanie's head. So since i couldn't figure out the outcome of this story, since i was, in a way, in the middle of living it, i decided to take the point of view of somebody dying. As much as I could imagine it, or anyone can, because, of course nobody comes back from the journey." "So i imagined what it could feel like: A succession of events and emotions, increasingly dramatic, interrupted by a void. Just stopping before it reaches a conclusion, an explanation. i always imagined death as a succession of ups and downs, like temperature curves and a minimum level, a sort of line that is only known after it's been crossed, that interrupts the curve with no return. That's the end of the film, the black with the credits. I don't think there is epilogue in life. We all go with the most dramatic event of our life, our death. Or maybe that's just me." "I'm not sure, but i think that's what i had in mind." 29 October 2006 A RETRACTION / YOUR REACTION? Attention readers! I just saw The Science of Sleep for the second time in the theater, and I must issue this statement: I am a complete moron. To explain: The way I literally watched the film and took it in on that initial viewing was completely tainted by this website, and the information I had read about the film beforehand. This time while I watched it - here, in my hometown - I was quite often blown away. It was actually very good, and I loved it. If you don't believe me, then please go see it for yourself and make up your own mind, for that is the only answer to that problem. Or have you seen it already? If so, what did you think of the film? (Post comments here.) Did you have a favorite scene? invention? (Personally, I liked the spin-art stuff quite a bit.) How do you rate it to Michel's other work? Maybe you can write the summary for me, that would be nice. ;) 15 October 2006 SLEEP WINS AUDIENCE AWARD La Ciencia del Sueño won an Audience Award for Best Motion Picture at the Sitges International Film Festival of Catalonia in Spain. Says Josep Pi from Barcelona, "I attended at the film presentation and [it] took a great response from the audience. It was the first time this film was shown in Spain, and we don't know yet when will we released in theaters. No Michel Gondry or any actors attended at the presentation. In my opinion it's a great film that needs a second view for a complete understanding and assimilation, as it happened to Eternal Sunshine, Human Nature or other Charlie Kaufman scripts." Thanks to Dani for initially telling me about this. My apologies for not reporting on this festival before it happened. 10 October 2006 SLEEP EXHIBIT PHOTOS The troops at Flickr have posted gads of pictures from the Science of Sleep exhibit at Deitch Projects. This one courtesy timnyc. Very, very fun. Have a look! Meanwhile, Corey Smith has posted this quick video illustrating one of the exhibits in Michel's Science of Sleep show. "Pulling on the ropes dangling from the ceiling resulted in a monitor built into the cardboard wall to display the main actor of the film, Gael García Bernal's eyes to open and close. Simple, no?" 2 October 2006 SLEEP BOX OFFICE Jumping from 14 to 221 theaters, The Science of Sleep clocked in at #15 over the weekend in America, earning $1.2 million, according to Box Office Mojo. Its current domestic total is $1.7m. Its French earnings kick it up to $5.3m. You can now see the film in France, Germany, and America; it will open it Belgium, Portugal, and Denmark later this week. 21 September 2006 THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP WEEK #1 The Science of Sleep opens this weekend in limited release in America! Check it if you're in Austin, Boston (Cambridge), Los Angeles, New York, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, or Washington D.C. If it's reviews you're looking for, you can track them at Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes. Two contests have arrived! There's quite a hefty prize for the winner of the Threadless contest. Design a great Sleep T-Shirt and you can get a prop from the film, $1,500, and other goodies. Meanwhile, there's a contest at IONCINEMA.com where you can win promotional swag, such as a "magical temperature changing tumbler," a Frisbee, a t-shirt, ear plugs, and other ephemera. Interviews are bound to keep sprouting up, and those I'll cover, although be warned: I'm not reading them anymore. New ones are at ComingSoon, IFC, and New York Press, who go inside the Science of Sleep exhibition. 7 August 2006 UK SLEEP DATE SLEPT ON Ack! Mix-up! I posted back in March that the UK date has been moved to November, but I didn't change the page's date from 28 July. This date change wasn't widely publicized, apparently: IMDB lists the failed date, and the arthouse folks at Curzon Soho had it printed in their July programme. Thanks to Rory for the heads up & info. 17 June 2006 GONDRY IN THE FLESH Jean-François Jégo sends along this flash video interview of Michel. It's in French, so I have no clue what's going on here. Jégo says: "They talk about Michel's dreams which inspired [The Science of Sleep], the actors (Miou-Miou who seems to look like Michel's mother), and at the end his next movie with Jack Black "Be kind rewind"." 13 June 2006 SLEEP POSTERS + MORE Dani Gonzalez writes to say that both French and American (via JoBlo.com) posters for The Science of Sleep are out. Indeed, Gaumont has published the official French site for Sleep, which is released there 16 August 2006 (not October, as initially reported). According to IMDB, it will also arrive in Belgium 23 Aug, Germany 26 Oct, and the Netherlands 23 Nov 2006. 10 June 2006 FRENCH PREMIERE OF SLEEP The Science of Sleep enjoyed its French premiere on Thursday at the Gaumont Marignan. I got this e-mail.. "My name is Elliott Kajdan, I am a french graphist student, and fan of michel gondry's works. Yesterday night, I went in a theater on the avenue des Champs-Elysées with a bunch of classemates to see the most crazy movie Michel ever did. Anyway, I took a lil pic..." 12 February 2006 SCIENCE OF SLEEP AT BERLINALE The Science of Sleep is making its rounds at the Berlin International Film Festival this weekend. ABC (Australia) interviewed Michel while he was there taking pictures of people taking pictures. In it he relishes the creative freedom of shooting a non-Hollywood film, and talks about being inspired from Communist childrens' programming. Meanwhile, we have some homework for you: Go to Getty Images' entertainment section and search for Gondry in the last 12 months (or just click here for less images). If you're a super-sleuth you'll find images from the Berlinale, Sundance, Toronto's Block Party premiere, and the DLabel premiere. Brownie points if you can spot Evil Michel. Finally, IONCINEMA.com has posted their review of Sleep. 9 February 2006 MORE SLEEP PHOTOS More photos from Sleep have surfaced, and these ones truly make me giddy. You gotta check these out! (Thanks, Vincent) 31 January 2006 QUICKIE If you're looking for the official PR images for Sleep, check twitchfilm.net. 31 January 2006 MORE SLEEP! Hannah McGill writes in the Herald (Scotland) that Sleep was her favorite movie of Sundance - and gives another vote for favorite after-party too! Sally Foster at FilmThreat says, "Gondry fuses chaos with order, conscious with unconscious, reality with imagination, and emotion with humor across the uneven terrain of Stephane's mind." 29 January 2006 SCIENCE OF SLEEP: LET'S SIT AND DIGEST THESE REVIEWS Two more reviews of the Sleep. And finally! Some in-depth commentary. The gist I, a gratefully educated and reasonable fella, can make of all these reviews this week is in these two. Karina Longworth of Cinematical writes that The Science of Sleep "will certainly frustrate those who want directors to essentially present them with neat little packages, fully contained narratives wrapped with perfect red bows." David Poland adds the final note, "The Science of Sleep is one of those films you can watch over and over and over again, loaded with gags and gimmicks and spectacularly beautiful and memorable images. It is very imperfect. But damn, is it fun. Gondry is a master of what he does. And you can feel the passion in every frame of the film. .. You really could view any 5 minutes like its own stand alone art project." If I were to review reviews, I'd say those two were the best this week. (Anybody care to review my review of these reviews?) There's also a new review in the Hollywood Reporter. 26 January 2006 SCIENCE OF SLEEP: DAY THREE A fella named Tony Papin wrote in about a new article in the French magazine Télérama where Michel describes his last year's activity. (You'll have to manually send that link through babelfish to get a translation.) There's another quick interview with Reuters, saying there was apparently a colder ending to the film at first, but Michel didn't have the heart to keep it. 25 January 2006 SCIENCE OF SLEEP ONLINE: DAY TWO - UPDATED! Canada's National Post has an article about The Science of Sleep. There's also a very positive review at efilmcritic.com, who says "The Science of Sleep is a movie that demands to be seen more than once, but it¹s something of a miracle that a movie this complex and this beautiful-not to mention, damn funny-can resonate so strongly on first viewing." (Thanks, Tram!) 24 January 2006 from SCIENCE OF SLEEP ACQUIRED FOR $6M + FIRST REVIEWS <Spoiler Zone> Meanwhile, the first online reviews are tumbling in. Variety's Todd McCarthy provides the most extensive review. A sample: "At pic's best, Gondry generates a sense of youthful camaraderie based on spontaneously prankish creativity that recalls the Godard of "Band of Outsiders"; there's a freewheeling exhilaration to some of the scenes augmented by the (admittedly little-used) Parisian setting and a sense of no limits. Downside, though, comes via an inordinate preoccupation with toys and childhood artifacts, one that reminds of nothing so much as Tim Burton's "Pee-wee's Big Adventure," a film aimed, unlike this one, at children." TimeOut London critic Dave Calhoun writes that it was "the most exciting offering so far in the quite lacklustre 'Premieres' section of the 11-day-long event." Also: "There was an after-party for the film on Park City's Main Street following the screening of the film, and it proved to be one of the best parties that this critic has experienced over three years of coming to Sundance." /film's Jon Christensen fell asleep during The Science of Sleep. The Globe and Mail wrote a small bit.</Spoiler Zone>.