Michele Gondry it becomes autobiographical The solution book. The director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind opens the door to his troubled creative process by returning to cinema after almost a decade without films.
Gondry here plays his alter ego Marc Becker, a director who, on the verge of being fired from the studio during a meeting on the post-production of his project, asks for a minute to go out for a smoke and decides to escape by pushing himself hard, together with his his producer and his editor, finishing the film confined to his aunt Denise’s rural house, in the heart of Occitania.
As soon as he arrives, the egocentric Marc decides to suddenly stop taking his cocktail of psychotropic drugs, under the pressure to save the project.
The film is inspired by the absurdities Gondry went through during post-production The foam of the dayswhich ended with a diagnosis of bipolarism.
In that period Gondy was experimenting with a non-chronological editing of the film, he tried to direct the orchestra that played the soundtrack with his body, he demanded the presence of a superstar to play the bass and even toyed with the idea of a four-part film parts, hours with an animation in between as an interval to go to the bathroom, among the eccentric follies represented here in various comic passages.
Mental health pressures and treatments
In “The Book of Solutions”, the protagonist is a director who tries to apologize, but he is an abuser.The explosive mix of mental health issues and the pressures surrounding the creative process push Marc to the limit. The protagonist immediately tries to procrastinate and ignore the end of the film, without even daring to watch its rough versions, with endless plans.
Becker loses concentration to the point of having the sensation of finally finding it again by looking through the hole in a leaf eaten by an ant, hence the urgent need to dedicate a documentary to a single ant which, to prevent it from escaping when it has need to go to the bathroom, got trapped in a jar.
Marc, suffocated by an infinity of problems amidst the infinite ideas that swirl in his mind, decides to look for air by starting to write exclusively solutions in a notebook, which take the form of contradictory solutions. jokes. Their remedies are “listen to no one” or “listen to everyone”, as the case may be, and include the ridiculous proposal to drive at a maximum speed of 20 kilometers per hour on the roads to “save millions of lives”.
The big problem with The solution book is that Marc Becker is an unpleasant harasser and, to what extent Pierre Niney making superhuman efforts to fill the character with charisma, it is very difficult to empathize with each of his whims.
“The Book of Solutions”, a funny film about a dark character.Gondry presented the film as a sort of self-criticism and declaration of love to the three collaborators mentioned above, but makes the protagonist’s constant requests for forgiveness useless in the face of every outburst.
The director seems to have a lenient view on his attitudes that turns every excuse into a sort of attempt at justification.
The solution book AND a fun coming of age film about a dark and out of control character. Gondry talks about himself with a certain condescension, but manages to reveal many of his obsessions without straying too far from the ideas and ingenious visual presentations that characterize his films.
File
The solution book
Qualification: Well
Dramatic comedy. France, 2023, 103′. SAM 13. Address: Michel Gondry. With: Pierre Niney, Blanche Gardin, Françoise Lebrun and Camille Rutherford. Rooms: Multiplex Belgrano, Cinépolis Recoleta, Cinemark Palermo, Atlas Patio Bullrich, Showcase Belgrano.
Source: Clarin
