Director: Michel Gondry
Writer: Michel Gondry
Stars: Pierre Niney, Blanche Gardin, Françoise Lebrun
Synopsis: Follows a man, a director who tries to vanquish his demons, which are oppressing his creativity.
Ever wanted to spend 102 minutes living inside Michel Gondry’s unfiltered mind? No? Then immediately avoid The Book of Solutions. If your answer is even a tentative yes, going through a fictionalized version of the director’s post Mood Indigo breakdown is still a lot to take in. If you are on the (fantastically inspired inventor) Gondry train already, The Book of Solutions is high-wire absurdity, and you’ll enjoy the constantly derailing ride.
Marc Becker (Pierre Niney) is a director presenting his unfinished film to his financiers. His working partner is doing what he can to run interference between Marc’s increasingly nebulous film (which will come together in the yet to be filmed fifth act) and the financiers who just want to take what there is and cut it into “something.” Marc refuses to relinquish his film and enacts an immediate heist along with his editor, Charlotte (Blanche Gardin) and producer Sylvia (Frankie Wallach) with some quick moves by the intern Gabrielle (Camilla Rutherford) to take all the hard drives to his Aunt’s house where they will finish the film in secret.
Marc is clearly having an extended nervous breakdown. His loving Aunt Denise (Françoise Lebrun and partially based on Gondry’s own aunt Suzette) takes in Marc and his team and patiently deals with his personality peccadilloes which have been exacerbated by his decision to suddenly cease taking his psychiatric medication. Marc is off the charts; his internal narration is almost consistently at odds with that is happening on screen. He’s selfish, temperamental, paranoid, anxious, and an egomaniac. He’s also avoiding actually finishing or even looking at the film.
For all the farcicality, and there is more than most films could deal with even Gondry’s own, there is the recognition that any artist who wants control of whatever they are making has to fight not only the material roadblocks of the process, but also the creative roadblocks. What if the film just isn’t any good? What if the film is genius but can only be so if there is proper collaboration? What if there are too many ideas or worse, too few? You can’t just make something and assume people will show up — a metaphor Gondry uses with Marc’s animated film about a fox attempting to open a hair salon.
Every possible genre gets squeezed in somewhere. Imagined gangster film, a smidgen of science fiction, obviously some slapstick humor, a will they/won’t they romance, paranoid imaginings, some odd psychosexual stuff, angry office equipment, and whatever is happening in Marc’s seemingly never to be completed magnum opus, ‘Anyone, Everyone.’ Marc also somehow ends up as a real estate owner, the interim mayor of the town in the Cévennes where he grew up with his much beloved aunt. And a hairdresser for a day. Because of course he does.
There is method in Gondry’s madness. Through Niney’s hyper-energetic performance we see an astounding set piece in which he conducts an orchestra with no score — they have to play based solely on his body movements. His “Book of Solutions” a book of rules he keeps making and breaking to facilitate the perfect piece of art does contain some wisdom — although Marc can barely tie his own shoelaces. He spends two days observing a bug. Days making an editing suite for Charlotte which is devised from an old truck. He has Denise star in her own comedy cooking show. Eventually he even gets Sting to play on the soundtrack to the film (Marc tells Sting how to play and gets away with it). He observes the ‘second gear’ rule while driving just to annoy people. He constantly wakes Sylvia up with new and urgent requests. He takes a dislike to one of the crew, Carlos (Mourad Boudaoud) for coughing too often. He makes pinhole cameras out of leaves, cuts down tree branches which he happens to be sitting on… he is unbearable but endlessly charming too.
Once Marc moves back to Paris after the film is somewhat abandoned (but rescued by Charlotte and Sylvia) he becomes even worse than he was in the Cévennes. The depression which follows the creative mania sets in and he quietly rejects everyone who reaches out to him, including Denise. Yet he finds a kindred spirit in his dream girl Gabrielle (with whom he had a fantastical relationship with earlier in the film). Can two oddballs who recognize each other be the solution? Is his no longer completely autonomous ‘Anyone, Everyone’ a film he will finally watch?
Explaining the plot of The Book of Solutions is akin to using skywriting in a foreign language on a cloudy day. You might see part of it, but just as you think you’ve got a handle on it, it vanishes. The themes are key. Marc’s love for Denise (a stand in for Gondry’s own aunt, Suzette) without whom he would not have his most important audience. Overcompensation because artistic vision has been “vandalized” before. The terror of facing the work which has been done. And recognition that one can be a “genius” and a “arsehole director” simultaneously and you can only get away with it for as long as you are giving something to the world. Marc’s real gift has nothing to do with the movie. One of the gifts he contemplates proffering is, shall we say, not something anyone wants.
Michel Gondry made in conjunction with Charlie Kaufman a film so beloved that it propelled him to a kind of fame he could never again live up to. Despite being involved with dozens of smaller projects, music videos, animations, television series — Gondry is always The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind guy. The Book of Solutions finds Gondry reflecting on his own career — parts are so self-referential and metatextual they require a non-fictional Gondry Bible.
Michel Gondry has thrown everything at the wall and seemingly randomly lets the audience decide what sticks — which is the most apt way of describing a career which includes the Seth Rogen starring The Green Hornet next to The Science of Sleep. Or The We and the I next to Human Nature. Gondry after all these years is still figuring out his formula, and The Book of Solutions might just be the most fun you will have trying to unlock his puzzle box mind.
