L'écume des jours

30 minutes in the movie and the question was inevitable: "Still 90 minutes like this?" Unfortunately yes.Two hours with visuals in almost every frame: animated ringing bell, dancing long legs,soap-bubbles TV, Duke Ellington, stop motioned food, protons guns, Duke Ellington again and much much much more.

Don't take me wrong, i love surreal stuff, I like Gondry and his past works too, from music video clips ('starguitar' and 'around the world' are two of my favorite) to movies (human nature, science of sleep, eternal sunshine and the 'Tokyo!' fragment) but this time looks like he maybe pushed a way too much the visual part of the story.

I didn't read the book, but i've read around that the movie is pretty accurate to the script, the original story is very interesting to me but while watching the movie at some point you'll realize that you don't care anymore about what is happening in the story, because you'll get just distracted by all the visuals.

The acting was good, almost everything was good but to me this was an artsy-videoclip-120 minute long and after watching it, i don't even know if i liked it or not.

5/10

First of all, i must admit that I didn't read the book. So perhaps that's the reason I didn't get the purpose of this film.

I was attending this movie with great expectations, I love the work of Michel Gondry and I couldn't wait to see Audrey Tatou and Omar Sy playing together.

The special effects were great, and as I said before Michel Gondry is one of my favorites. But here's the thing, I was unhappy during the movie. I couldn't develop sympathy for the main characters, because the storyline felt missing too often. Combine that with the weird dialogs and the straying from one scene to another without a proper connection, you'll get why. The dialog, and I understand that this was adopted from the book, but in this movie it just didn't made sense.

I couldn't feel what I wanted to feel about this movie, I wanted to like it so badly but I couldn't. I feel the film was more focused on the special effects than on the actual character development and storyline.

Usually, I do not care about how a book is adapted, as long as the movie is good on its own. In that case it was completely different; I am a huge, massive Boris Vian fan, and I never thought his style (for example the way he took metaphors literally) could be set upon a screen.

That is to say, until I've heard that Gondry was directing L'écume des Jours. Sometimes, those things just make sense; Gondry is the only one who could have transformed Boris Vian into something visual, and that is exactly what he did, and with no CGI, only old fashioned tricks. The DIY way ladies and gentlemen, that's what it is all about.

Maybe many will dislike this movie. Others, like me, will love it passionately, for its effusiveness, for its communicative joy, for its unrelenting sadness. But at least, people will feel what Boris Vian is all about. And I mean especially for the English speaking countries, where Boris Vian is really not well known and most of the time poorly translated: by transcribing his style to a visual dimension, Gondry made it universal.

I read the book many years ago and barely remembered it, but I still felt that magic of the absurd or weird that had impressed me so much. The film indeed manages to translate this feeling into visual images, but I felt that it was too much, and while with the book I never felt it tried to be funny, the film did. At least it was my impression that it was a bit slapstick in part, and through some parts I did get bored. However, it did become strong towards the end, in the tragic part. Suddenly the absurdity and weirdness became a proper language for the tragic development, it became a mirror of the protagonists inner world and feelings. It really impressed me there.

To me, this movie does what movies are for: activate the imagination. In this case, touching a theme not as alien as one might wish it to be in a fantastic setting. The 'fantastic' way in which people and institutions appear is far from random; it feels to me like a hyperdream of familiar entities and sensations, their logical extreme. Rich, vivid imagination which enters your brain and puts hooks in it. Loved the book and Gondry made it even more alive for me. Quite a feat. If you do like the movie, please check out the book (and also other titles by Vian). Don't want to generalize too much but if you like movies by Terry Gilliams you will probably like this a lot, too. Rats, writing reviews is hard and I'm not very good at it; but i so disagree with the IMDb-grade for this film (currently 5.8) and the general reviews I've read so far that I had to create an account just to weigh in. So please go see this film and find out for yourself!

Did I mention already that it is beautifully made, and at times very funny?