Mood Indigo

Audrey Tautou, style icon and actress, stars in Michel Gondry's adaptation of Boris Vian's novel, Mood Indigo. UK release date is scheduled for 1 August 

If you are in need of magical escapism this summer then look no further than French film Mood Indigo, the new release from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director Michel Gondry.

Audrey Tautou stars in this fantastical adaptation of the much-lauded French novel L’Écume des Jours (also translated as Froth on the Daydream) by Boris Vian- a polymath who was a successful novelist, jazz musician and critic. A treasured classic of post-war French literature, the book’s central love story has an enduring appeal thanks to its bohemian aesthetic and anarchic use of language.

Colin (Romain Duris) is an innocent but wealthy Parisian eccentric who desperately wants to find love. Handily, it doesn’t take him long to meet a kindred spirit when he encounters Lily (Tautou) at a party.

They fall in love and get married, but the plot is only half the appeal of the film- Gondry’s luscious visuals are the main attraction.  

The source material from Vian’s book- which features myriad word play, puns, spoonerisms and puckish references to close friend Jean-Paul Sarte- has been saddled with the unfortunate epithet ‘unfilmable’. But Gondry has bridged the gap between the book’s ludic linguistics and his film by playing to his remarkable flair for images, making Mood Indigo a chocolate box of visual verve and invention.  

Gondry renders the Dadaist milieu whipped up by Colin to include scuttling doorbells, living food, a mechanical cloud-swan-car, and a cocktail-making piano through use of classic and stop-motion animation. Live action and animation marry perfectly with Vian’s surrealist source material to create a beguiling, whirring, magical world that has the all visual appeal of a live-action Sorcerer’s Apprentice.  

But for all the childlike visual fun, the film has a real edge of emotional poignancy when Lily falls sick- in keeping with the rest of the film: from a water lily growing in her lung- and the pair have to face up to the reality of their love affair being interrupted by serious illness.

The delightful Tautou is enchanting as always, and the ebullient Omar Sy (who produced a memorable and award-winning performance in 2011 film Untouchable) provides suitably effervescent support as Colin’s chef and majordomo. 

Quite unlike anything else you’re likely to see in the cinema this summer- or perhaps any season- Mood Indigo’s world is a unique creation from the Academy Award-winning director Gondry.