Mood Indi­go

What if the world around us react­ed direct­ly to our emo­tions? It would be a jum­bled, chaot­ic, man­ic expe­ri­ence. And that is exact­ly what Michel Gondry deliv­ers in his adap­ta­tion of Boris Vian’s 1946 sur­re­al­ist nov­el, ​‘Froth on the Day­dream’. In his hey­day, Vian hung out with jazz leg­end Duke Elling­ton and exis­ten­tial­ist philoso­pher Jean-Paul Sartre, both of whom get more than a look-in in this spir­it­ed and fre­net­ic tribute.

Gondry’s roman­tic sci-fi fol­lows putre­fy­ing bride Chloe (Audrey Tatou) who, short­ly after get­ting mar­ried to inven­tor Col­in (Romain Duris), devel­ops a ter­mi­nal case of a water lily grow­ing in her lung. We first meet Col­in shuf­fling around his bright and busy apart­ment with lawyer and bud­ding chef Nico­las (Omar Sy) ready­ing them­selves for the arrival of friend and Jean-Sol Patre-obses­sive Chick (Gad Elmaleh). Viewed through this prism, the film deliv­ers a pletho­ra of ideas and ref­er­ences which beg to be untapped post-viewing.

This mot­ley crew’s every move is gov­erned by a pas­tel-wear­ing cadre of work­ers who sit on a con­vey­er-belt of spin­ning type­writ­ers, ran­dom­ly pen­ning a line of nar­ra­tive for the world below. A grand hub doles out rev­el­ry and mad­cap adven­tures gild­ed with under­ly­ing men­ace which even­tu­al­ly descends into a dystopia of dis­ease, bit­ter mat­ri­mo­ny and pover­ty. Colin’s dream of hap­pi­ness col­laps­es as he is forced to find a job to pay for Chloe’s treat­ment. He then realis­es Chick is steal­ing from him in order to get his Patre fix.

When Col­in is stripped of his free­dom and forced to har­vest muni­tions for the gov­ern­ment, Mood Indi­go shifts into Orwellian night­mare ter­ri­to­ry, adopt­ing the grim yet inspired aes­thet­ic rem­i­nis­cent of Ter­ry Gilliam’s Brazil. Despite the dark­ness, Gondry does pro­vide a bea­con of hope in the form of a mouse (a man in a suit of course) who inhab­its Colin’s abode and is deter­mined to make the long ardu­ous jour­ney out of suf­fo­cat­ing fren­zy for the sake of art.

Gondry is most inter­est­ed in reflect­ing his char­ac­ters emo­tions through the phys­i­cal, and with his imag­i­na­tive cre­ations that whizz across the screen at a break-neck pace, the dia­logue becomes a pit­ter-pat­ter of child­like fan­cy. Though there’s method in his mad­ness with the colour­ful palette dulling as the film pro­gress­es and the pace slow­ing as Chloe’s con­di­tion gets worse. This does, how­ev­er, pro­voke an unex­pect­ed crav­ing for the loud, bright menagerie of inven­tion, and the inclu­sion of a grown female char­ac­ter who utters the words ​“I don’t like boys who say hor­rid things in front of girls” real­ly has no place in the mod­ern world.

The director’s cus­tom­ary Won­ka-like sym­po­sium of cul­tur­al ref­er­ences is on full throt­tle here as he assem­bles intri­cate stop motion, mini-oven canapés, Rubix Cube diaries and a Cro­nen­ber­gian-like cre­ation of a door­bell bug to dizzy­ing effect. In fact, there’s quite a few sim­i­lar­i­ties between Mood Indi­go and Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch, not least their abstract nature, but also their com­mit­ment to fash­ion­ing an impres­sion­is­tic por­trait of a fierce lit­er­ary source.