Mood Indigo

This adaptation by Michel Gondry (‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’) of French author Boris Vian’s whimsical 1947 novel ‘Froth on the Daydream’ is aggressively irritating. Our hero, well-to-do Parisian Colin (Romain Duris), lives a carefree life, partly thanks to his attentive financial adviser/personal chef Nicolas (Omar Sy), whose meals literally come alive on the plate. And his apartment is a fantasy world, where a mini-man in a mouse costume lives in the walls and a piano-cum-cocktail-dispenser makes blended drinks. (It’s called, natch, a ‘pianocktail’).

Is your quirk meter overloaded yet? Just wait until Chloé (Audrey Tautou) enters the picture. She’s the woman of Colin’s dreams, and the duo embarks on a whirlwind romance that involves everything from a cloud car that flies across the skyline to a wedding presided over by a priest who descends in a spaceship. Tragedy is also in the offing, though the film’s change in mood doesn’t stop Gondry from overloading each scene with continually ‘inventive’ sights. The results make your head spin more than they make your spirits soar. For the most part, Gondry’s overwrought visions repel real feeling.