Mood Indigo (2013)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Captivating movie !

As Good As It Gets

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

I stumbled into this movie after seeing the preview and thinking this would be a nice clever movie to watch and it was for the first half-- until Chloé becomes ill. The movie starts with vibrant colors, wonderful visual action, meals that are literally animated. Just look at the photos on IMDb. All happy. I really enjoyed the first half. Then Chloé gets a lung infection and her lover/husband Colin goes on a quest to save her. The film turns dark (literally) and by the end I felt like I'd been watching John Hurt in "1984". That crushed. You have been warned.

Wow! I'm still scratching my head as to how I can articulate MOOD INDIGO in a way that neither discourages you from the experience nor encourages you enough to take the plunge into a fantastical world of stop motion animation, digital special effects and mechanical effects that you will detest (and me) afterwards. In a nutshell, MOOD INDIGO is like THE WIZARD OF OZ met the Monty Python comedy group somewhere on the yellow brick road and decided to rewrite 'Wolly Winker and the Focolate Chactory' with Michael Gondry (ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND) in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.Gondry's adaption of Boris Vian's cult novel 'L'Ecume des Jours' is an exhaustive tale filled with tant d'indulgence that it struggles to deliver a tone and tempo that allows the viewer to find a balance between what is seen and heard on screen and the story expressed. And that therein, lies the problem: the non-stop whimsical flights-of-fancy such as the pianocktail, walking doorbell, mini mouse-man and the curved dining table on skates distract too much from the emotion of this tragic romance.MOOD INDIGO tells the story of wealthy, bohemian inventor Colin (Romain Duris) who lives in a rooftop, trailer-esque apartment overlooking Paris with roommate, chef and lawyer, Nicolas (Omar Sy). Bemoaning the lack of a lover with Nicolas and 'Patre' fanatic pal Chick (Gad Elmaleh) over lunch, Colin decides to attend a party at Isis' (Charlotte Le Bon) house where he meets 'a girl like a Duke Ellington tune' named Chloé (Audrey Tautou). After wooing her with dancing, ice-skating and a trip across Paris in a floating cloud car, the two fall madly in love and get married.The honeymoon, filmed in split-screen with sunshine on one side and rain on the other acts as a transitional point to a more sombre, monochromatic setting as Chloé becomes afflicted by a dangerous lung condition after swallowing a water lily. Again, Gondry fails to connect the audience emotionally to the denouement, preferring to use evolving set designs to represent fluctuating character moods and a 'six month later' title card to fast forward their declining situation.In order to pay for the ongoing and expensive medical treatments and surgery proposed by Chloé's doctor (played by Gondry himself), Colin (who is now broke), is forced to give up his bohemian lifestyle and take on a number of jobs to save his dying wife including one in a munitions factory. This symbolic metaphor for Chloé's death knell is also heightened visually by the muting of colour to monochrome. Although MOOD INDIGO was a struggle from the get go, it definitely has an appeal attractive to selective audiences. That audience however, just happens to not include me.You can catch more at my Twitter handle theSachaHall and The Hollywood News.

"This feeling of solitude is unfair. I demand to fall in love too!"No one does surrealism better than the French, but unfortunately I'm not into surrealism and I usually have a hard time enjoying this genre in general. Mood Indigo is probably more surreal than any other film you've seen before, and despite the fantastic visuals and rich imagery used I had a hard time engaging with the characters and its lack of a strong narrative story. I was a huge fan of director, Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and despite the surrealism in that film I enjoyed the strong narrative along with the romance, but I guess a lot of that had to do with Charlie Kaufman's involvement in the writing of the script. Mood Indigo kind of feels like that short scene where Jim Carrey's character was sharing his memory from his childhood as a small scaled adult, with the exception that in Mood Indigo the entire film is like that. There are many surreal elements, like a rat sized man dressed in a rat costume running around the house, a door bell that takes a life of its own every time someone rings the bell, and there's a piano that makes cocktail drinks depending on the notes you play, among many other things (and did I mention how people's legs stretch like rubber every time they started dancing?). Mood Indigo is a great title, although I like the sound of the original French title, L'écume des jours, but the English title fits the film well because moods are a predominant element here. It is a unique film, but one that I had a hard time connecting with and got little enjoyment out of it.Despite not having a strong narrative, I enjoyed the performances in this film. Romain Duris plays Colin, a wealthy bachelor who falls in love with Audrey Tautou's character, Chloe. They quickly fall in love and everything around them seems to blossom. That is until Chloe develops a strange illness when a flower begins to grow in her lungs. Colin will spend his fortune and do what it takes in order to save her, but little by little the happiness and brightness of his home begins to lose its intensity. Other strong performances came from Omar Sy who played Colin's overly enthusiast chef and who prepares some strange dishes with the help of a TV cook, and then there is also Colin's best friend, Chick, played by Gad Elmaleh who is in a relationship as well and is always hanging out at his home. They all give strong performances and help set the surreal tone of the film with their energetic deliveries. It was great to see Omar Sy again because I really enjoyed his performance in The Intouchables. He was probably my favorite character in this film.Ultimately the film wore me out and I had a hard time sticking with the entire story because I wished it had a stronger narrative story. I never really cared for the characters here because Gondry was more focused on the images and the fantastical elements rather than on telling a story. This is as close as you get to watching a live action cartoon so if that is what the audience is looking for they will be pleased, but it just wasn't a film for me.

Anyone familiar with Michel Gondry's recent Hollywood films would be gobsmacked by Mood Indigo, a lovely but utterly surrealist twist on an old tale. It's hard to imagine the director of The Green Hornet and Be Kind Rewind putting together something quite as odd and delicate as this - although those who remember the heady swirl and triumph of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind will be better able to adjust to Gondry's blithely strange take on Boris Vian's 1947 novel L'Écume Des Jours (Froth On The Daydream).Colin (Romain Duris) is happy, healthy and wealthy enough not to have to work. He spends his days chatting with his best friend Chick (Gad Elmaleh) and lawyer/mentor/buddy Nicolas (Omar Sy), and inventing cheerful little contraptions like his 'pianocktail' - a piano wired to brew a cocktail out of the music it plays. At a party, he meets Chloé (Audrey Tautou), and they dance and romance their way into marriage. All is wonderful until Chloé falls ill: a water lily is growing in her lungs, and the only way she can be treated - to be surrounded with fresh flowers everyday - is prohibitively expensive for Colin and his dwindling coffers.Mood Indigo is, in a word, delightful. If it had been filmed in a completely straightforward way, with Chloé suffering from a far less exotic ailment, the movie would be boring - its plot thin and predictable. But, because the romance between Colin and Chloé unfolds in a universe in which doorbells clatter noisily to life and sunbeams turn into solid threads of white light, it feels bright, fresh and endlessly charming. The surrealist bent of this cinematic universe - one that hums to the jazz of Duke Ellington (whose songs provide both the English title of the film and Chloé's name) - adds a touch of very welcome magic to the love story. It's the kind of glorious flight of fancy that one hardly ever encounters in romantic comedies these days, except in painfully manufactured chunks.The film showcases an enchanting array of offbeat ideas: from the constantly rotating typing pool that tells the story even as we watch it on screen, through to the pet mouse (played by actor Sacha Bourdo in a mouse costume) that has free run of Colin's house. As Nicolas' elaborate meals waltz across the table and everyone's legs bend and elongate for the most fashionable dance of the moment, it's incredible to think that the film - impressive, breathtaking production design and all - was made on a meagre budget (by Hollywood standards) of approximately US$26 million.It's true that the characters feel somewhat underwritten: the supporting characters, in particular, exist only to fill their appointed roles, such as Chick's expensive and all-consuming obsession with celebrity intellectual Jean-Sol Partre (a sly reference, of course, to Vian's own philosopher friend, Jean-Paul Sartre). But the cast is good enough to make up for it. Sy and Elmaleh are wonderfully droll, especially when Chick and Nicolas meet their own respective love interests in the form of Alise (Aïssa Maïga) and Isis (Charlotte Le Bon).More importantly, Duris and Tautou are a gift: they look great on screen, of course, but they also share a sweet, believable chemistry that helps gloss over the deficiencies of the script. Tautou is so effervescent that her charm remains intact even when her character is forced into the role of a sickly invalid in the second half of the film. Duris treads the fine line between comedy and tragedy with ease, exuding joy and also misery as Colin's life takes an unexpected turn for the better - and then, invariably, the worse.Many viewers might be turned off by the endless inventiveness showcased in Mood Indigo, yearning instead for a more grounded story and characters who are less flighty and feather-light than the ones we meet. But it's hard to argue with the many and various delights of Gondry's film, many of which are purely cinematic. What other film would dare to take a race to the altar very literally indeed, or bleed quietly into monochrome when a character's heart breaks?