The Science of Sleep

The plot of Michel Gondry’s narrative follow-up to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (he also directed Dave Chappelle’s Block Party) defies easy summary but concerns the vivid dream life of an arrested-adolescent artist named Stephane (Gael García Bernal). Sundance audiences sparked to the visual whimsy of the film, whose elaborate dream sequences were shot six months before principal photography. ”We could tell what was going on because so much of it is physical” rather than computer-generated, García Bernal says. Added Gondry, low-tech and proud: ”We never used a bluescreen!”