It took me a while. This film is just plain weird. There's the extroverted Stephane, just back from Mexico to live with his mum on the death of his father. But his mum's not there. And there's the introverted Stephanie who moves in next door. Stephane's flights of fantasy are getting too much - a disjointed miasma of hoarded children's art materials - coloured cellophane, cardboard tubes etc. And that purple suit he keeps wearing...
But slowly, the film unravels. The suit is there to enable Stephane to journey into his fantasies - its laid out on the floor beside his bed to enable him to slip into it. But this is not fantasy - this is mental illness. This is schizophrenia. Suddenly, the whole film takes on a different meaning. No longer is this just occasionally stunning, occasionally annoying fantasies. This is Stephane's grip on societal normality (not his own) slipping. The disastereology calendar has a logic to Stephane as does his views of work colleagues etc. The chance to be creative is at its highest when that slippage is at its height - the crazy inventions (loved the one second time machine), the intense behaviour around his counterpoint character, Stephanie. She too is creative (and the boat/tree subplot is a beautiful merging of their two characters) but her chemical balance falls 'below the line' - it's a thin line between madness and sanity. Stephane definitely falls into the former, Stephanie in the latter. She is doomed from the beginning -to fall in love with a man who is a potential creative genius, but who is also as likely self destruct.
For me, not everything worked in the film - particularly some of the scenes at his place of work. But this is a stunning exploration of mental illness and the impact it has on those around. By presenting the face of the illness as Gael Bernal, it also makes it more palatable for mass consumption. It's a beautiful story of love. Not necessarily a love story per se - a story of love.
But slowly, the film unravels. The suit is there to enable Stephane to journey into his fantasies - its laid out on the floor beside his bed to enable him to slip into it. But this is not fantasy - this is mental illness. This is schizophrenia. Suddenly, the whole film takes on a different meaning. No longer is this just occasionally stunning, occasionally annoying fantasies. This is Stephane's grip on societal normality (not his own) slipping. The disastereology calendar has a logic to Stephane as does his views of work colleagues etc. The chance to be creative is at its highest when that slippage is at its height - the crazy inventions (loved the one second time machine), the intense behaviour around his counterpoint character, Stephanie. She too is creative (and the boat/tree subplot is a beautiful merging of their two characters) but her chemical balance falls 'below the line' - it's a thin line between madness and sanity. Stephane definitely falls into the former, Stephanie in the latter. She is doomed from the beginning -to fall in love with a man who is a potential creative genius, but who is also as likely self destruct.
For me, not everything worked in the film - particularly some of the scenes at his place of work. But this is a stunning exploration of mental illness and the impact it has on those around. By presenting the face of the illness as Gael Bernal, it also makes it more palatable for mass consumption. It's a beautiful story of love. Not necessarily a love story per se - a story of love.