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Mood Indigo (12A)
Directed by Michel Gondry
4/5
This exquisitely surreal tale is a wonderful visual bombardment of the senses which will leave you in awe and wonderment at the ingenuity and sheer cinematic genius of director Michel Gondry.
It begins in a 1960s-style, brightly coloured typing pool where they are typing up the story of Colin (Romain Duris), a rich and inventive young man who falls in love with the effervescent Chloe (Audrey Tautou), who epitomises Duke Ellington’s Chloe.
Their idyllic marriage is devastated when she falls seriously ill after a water lily starts growing in her lung — you just have to go with it.
Based on Boris Vian’s novel L’Ecume Des Jours, this is a colourful and truly bizarre interpretation of love, life and death.
The first half of the film is vibrant, whimsical and full of hope and expectations as Colin searches for love and finds it in Chloe, who he woos by showing her Paris in a swan-shaped capsule operated by a crane.
He has the most avant garde flat with a door bell that turns into an insect, a kitchen in which eels pop out of the taps, there is dancing food, a dining table on roller skates and of course his proudest invention the pianoctails — a piano which mixes cocktails as you play it.
Did I mention his man-mouse house guest?
It is all frothy and light until Chloe falls ill, when the tone of the film changes to a more sombre and brooding one.
All the colour and life is slowly sucked out as the movie turns to sepia and then black and white.
Colin’s flat begins to decay and becomes overgrown with dense giant cobwebs.
Duris and Tautou make an adorable couple and Tautou is perfect as the beautiful and charmingly delicate Chloe.
Gad Elmaleh is terribly earnest as Colin’s best friend Chick who is obsessed with Jean-Sol Partre — aka Jean Paul Sartre — while Omar Sy is hilarious as Colin’s lawyer, cook, driver and confidante who teaches him the most ridiculous dance ever — the Biglemoi.
Mood Indigo is bizarre and delightful and one of a kind plus a great treat if you adore Duke Ellington’s music.
