Drafthouse Films
Back away from your fluffy DVD collection, unhand that Cheshire Cat-smiling theatrical poster and give that cardboard box some breathing room – it’s time for us to hit you with a big, fresh smack of charm and colors and Audrey Tautou just like, totally dying. Michel Gondry is back, baby, and he’s got an extremely “Michel Gondry”-looking film to entertain his (adorably) rabid fanbase, all with extra Tautou sweetness to rope in the Amelie obsessives out there. It’s sort of like if drugs were made out of cotton candy and gentle nap time dreams. And, yes, that’s a very good thing.
Looking more like the direct descendent of his The Science of Sleep (a film that I will champion until the day I die, if only for the yarn ponies) than a close sibling of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Mood Indigo has Gondry again trafficking in charm, a word that will be used ad nauseum to describe the film, because it’s really the only one that fits. Based on Boris Vian’s beloved novel of the same name, Mood Indigo sees Tautou and Romain Duris (he’s dreamy) meeting cute, falling in love, hitching up and dealing with imminent death. Wait, what? We’ll get to that, but until then, let’s just soak in all the Gondry-esque charm in the latest Mood Indigo trailer, okay? It’s sweet, we promise.
Also, this trailer graces us with perhaps the most definitive and on-the-nose Gondry line ever: “I demand to fall in love, too!” Perhaps we will all fall in love with Mood Indigo, together and after the break.
Pushing aside all that charm and sweetness and stop motion and dancing and humor and incredibly unsafe vehicles, this trailer doesn’t exactly hide what happens in the film. Colin (Duris) and Chloe (Tautou) meet – Colin, instantly winning over a certain section of shut-ins, doesn’t even want to be there – and fall in love. Good start, right? After a candy-colored and immensely floaty courtship, they marry. Still good? Totally!
And then she swallows a water lily and comes down with an illness that is, quite likely, the most perfect conceit for a Gondry film ever. No, really, we’re not kidding. Imagine this – Chloe swallows a water lily, and the only treatment for her illness is other flowers. She has to be surrounded by fresh flowers at all times, or she will die. Is this a parable about modern romantic expectations or what? Sold!
Need more Mood Indigo to tie you over until later this summer? Take a look back at another trailer from the film, which our own Nathan Adams posted way, waaaay back in January of 2013.
Mood Indigo will finally arrive on U.S. soil on July 18th.