THE “WORLD’S” OPINION – MUST SEE
At 60 this year, Michel Gondry finally deserves to stop calling him a big teenager. Even if he would more often than not offer rods to get beaten.
Let’s say that the spirit of adventure and tinkering – inherited from a family of nosy musicians and inventors – sticks to the soles of this Versailles native who has carved out a fine reputation in Hollywood (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind2004 ; Be nice, rewind2008; The green hornet2011), without ceasing to cultivate his artisanal spirit, here devoting a documentary to his Cévennes teacher aunt (The Thorn in the Heart2010) or hosting in 2011, at the Center Pompidou, transformed into a mini-studio, The Amateur Film Factory, ultra-fast filming workshops accessible to all, everyone leaving with their own little film (thanks again Michel!).
Manufacturing process
A quick look at this career – and this is again the case with his latest film, the road movie in a DIY truck of the two teenagers Microbe and Diesel (2015) – allows us to consider the process of “manufacturing” considered in itself as the great existential and artistic motif of Michel Gondry. Manufacturing of objects, procedures and protocols, such as they determine the making of oneself throughout this supreme experience that is our own life. It is an understatement to say that The Book of Solutions hardly strays from this motif, which has already served a lot. As in Be nice, rewind – which is considered to this day to be its author’s masterpiece – it is the cinema itself which serves here as a learning instrument.
It all begins with a lynching scene. In the posh office of his producers, Marc, a highly feverish, mythomaniac and anxious filmmaker (Pierre Niney), is severely reprimanded and dispossessed of his working copy. Neither one nor two, he rushes with a team of faithful reduced to the minimum – Charlotte, his editor (Blanche Gardin), and Sylvia, his assistant (Frankie Wallach) – to get their hands on the precious computers and takes off until ‘to the house of Denise (Françoise Lebrun), his good Cévennes aunt and biggest fan, to finish his film as he wishes. Assailed by ideas, convinced of his genius, he wrote to try to keep a cool head for a while. “solution book”a collection of high-pitched responses to a list of incongruous problems.
Problem: Marc’s perpetually feverish brain, who believes, as a demiurge artist but deprived of the support of his financiers, that everything is possible, challenges himself to realize often crazy ideas and puts a very severe test on the nerves of his collaborators. In this regard, if he has in Denise a faithful person in all situations, it’s a different story with his team, as attentive as they are. Angry, confused, impatient, mythomaniac, tyrannical, in almost constant inadequacy with reality, Marc commonly makes himself unbearable, but has an unshakeable belief in his project. This is his strength.
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