21/05/2023 - CANNES 2023: The ever-inventive and funny Michel Gondry takes us to the countryside in the chaotic and creative wake of a bipolar director on the run with a film whose editing is unfinished

"Would you rather I tell you the truth or that you spiral out of control? – I’ll take spiralling out of control". Much like the main character in his new film, The Book of Solutions [+see also:
trailer
interview: Michel Gondry
film profile], discovered in the 55th Directors’ Fortnight (within the 76th Cannes Film Festival), Michel Gondry is an artist who loves a shortcut, homemade DIY, hyper sensitivity, and the poetic power of dreamers trying to escape a brutal world. Such is the case for Marc, a director hiding out in the Cévennes with his inner circle (his editor and two assistants) after doing a runner when the production team insisted on taking back control of his new film Chacun. Tout le monde ("that’s what you promised us and that’s what you’ll deliver! It’s grey, it’s ugly, the actors are unrecognisable and it’s costing us 5 million. We need to stop filming; we’re going to try to save the furnishings and our investment"). But when the artist in question also has bipolar disorder, things are rarely restful for his entourage.

"I think that a myriad of ideas and experiences which seems to veer off in all directions can actually be part of one same idea and converge to take the film to the next level". Put like this, everything seems to make perfect sense, but in practice, for those closest to Marc (Pierre Niney who’s in his element) - his old aunt Denise (Françoise Lebrun) who takes everyone into her house in the thick of the forest, his faithful editor Charlotte (Blanche Gardin), his assistant director Sylvia (Frankie Wallach) and general dogsbody Carlos (Mourad Boudaoud) – it’s more about stemming the flow (a nigh-on impossible mission) of the more or less zany initiatives which gush forth from the mind of the filmmaker (who has also decided to stop taking his medication), managing his anxieties, and trying to finish the film. But this is no easy thing, despite the affection they all have for Marc, who finds any excuse to escape the editing room and wakes them all up in the middle of the night to share every inspired but eccentric idea he has: "the film will start off as a perfect palindrome. We’ll start with the end, we’ll end with the end, and we’ll link it back up with the beginning".

With The Book of Solutions, Michel Gondry fashions an alter-ego who’s both endearingly funny and in a permanent, poignant state of great excitement ("by tackling the fundamental principles of creativity, I sank ever deeper into the shadows of incomprehension. It was the price I had to pay. Only my inspiration led me towards the light"), expressed through the character’s inner voice. But The Book of Solutions also reveals itself to be a pertinent explanation (never too far away from humour) of the various steps involved in the creative process ("kicking off your project", "learning on the job", "not listening to others") and of the archetypes in the film industry microcosm. The captain of the ship in this film advances in a state of mental inebriation, but Michel Gondry finds the right ingredients to turn it into a highly entertaining offering, an incredibly personal comedy which loses a bit of momentum on the home straight, but which nonetheless foregrounds the fragilities of real artists who are capable of "drawing music out of silence", whilst also, on occasion, turning out to be their own worst enemies.

The Book of Solutions is produced by Partizan Films and sold worldwide by Kinology.

(Translated from French)