The Science shares some elements with Eternal Sunshine: 1/ The mixing of three different interlinked chronological moments and tempos, in this case the time of reality, the time of dream, and the time of almost sleep but not yet awake. 2/ The depiction of the complexities of the human heart and how difficult personal relationships can be. 3/ An oniric approach to reality, the importance of dreams in real life, and vice versa.
The dream world of Stephan is, like him, childish but delightful; the animators of the movie really succeed in projecting on the screen the personality of Stephen's dreams by using children-style animation made of animals, houses, and other elements made of cardboard, felt and papier-mache, put together like classical puppetry animation does. I loved the 70s feeling of the movie in tones and style. The visual transcription of the dreams is really funny and stylishly done using minimal special effects and using mostly old-school craftsmanship animation.
The cast is reduced, as the movie focus mainly on three characters. I found Gael Garcia Bernal great and natural in his portray of Stephan, a childish young weird artist, emotionally insecure, creative but very destructive, and a little bit insane. The fact that the actor is baby-faced and short really helps to support the childishness of his character. Charlotte Gainsbourg is OK -a little bit hieratic perhaps- as Stephanie, an introverted insecure "artsy" person who shares many things with Stephan's world. Alain Chabat, very well known by French movies lovers, is great as Guy, Stephan's sound, cheeky and matter-of-fact friend.
A few downs in the movie. The analysis of the dreams being the purpose of Gondry's exploration, this fact somewhat dilutes the strength of a wonderful unconventional love story, which is, however, the core of the story. This won't engage many viewers. On the other hand, the end has no emotional closure, but is not open either - unresolved. It is logical as, after all, dreams end abruptly most times; however, I would have liked the movie to have some sort of closure. The scene related to the date at the Café, almost at the end of the movie, is perhaps the most abstract and difficult to understand.
The movie has a mix of reviews, mostly because it is difficult to understand at times and is really unconventional, which is what I love about it.
