The Science of Sleep

As it wasn't sunny today so we couldn't go to Regents Park (boo) we decided to go back to bed and watch a film. I have been wanting to see The Science of Sleep for ages, in fact we even went to go and see it at the pictures once but had a row en route so never quite made it, haha.
Anyway. I like Gael Garcia Bernal especially as my ex-boyfriend went to drama school with him and used to fly into a rage at the slightest mention. Nowadays I can watch Gael guilt-free. He's not that sexy though, and he's a bit of a midget, so I dunno what the fuss is about.
Anyway, I digress. You know how two of the worst things in the world are a. someone telling you about their dream and b. a story that ends with 'and they woke up and it was all a dream!' Well this film combines both of those and I would imagine the vast majority of people would absolutely hate this film. My mum for example, a fine arbiter of taste, would not have lasted five minutes. And I have to concede, it's a lot less accessible than 'Eternal Sunshine...' firstly because they speak in a mixture of languages throughout. That is kind of annoying: subtitles are OK but the mixture is a bit disconcerting, which I suppose is the point. Yawn! I'm such a lazy film watcher- don't make me work too hard or my brain gets confused.
The whole thing reminded me of an extended Bright Eyes video: you know the one with the big talky bit at the start 'At The Bottom of Everything' (what a ridiculous choice for a single: actually- that can't have been a single- I don't own it- so why the hell did they make a video for it? Either way, there could have been a radio edit for the video, dammit!) ANYWAY, the animation and the plane crash in that was very reminicent of the visuals in this film. It was a beautiful film, very quirky and incredibly creative artistically. I completely admire the way it's shot, and the fact that most people would hate it. That's a good thing, of course.
It's just the plot that was the problem really: I'm quite happy to not know if this bit is dream or reality but I found some of it quite jarring and it didn't really help the pace of the film. The characters were also quite annoying- it wasn't a love story where you were really vouching for either side as they were just pretentious knob-heads really. Poor Stephane, a creative person stuck in a dead end job. Join the club, mate.
The ideas for the dreams were good though, it did feel like you were watching a dream unfold, which I think is something cinema rarely captures convincingly.
So yes. As an extended music video, perfect. As a heartwarming, subversive love-story it didn't quite hit the spot for me.