Through a glass strangely ... a still from Gondry's Smirnoff ad
Despite awesome command of camera technique and contact books filled with the beautiful people, it's still beyond most music promo directors who aren't related by marriage to Francis Ford Coppola to make it in the somewhat more rigorous world of feature film-making. But following hard on the heels of Spike Jonze is the mercurial Michel Gondry, whose new film, The Science of Sleep, arrives in UK cinemas next week.
What impresses slack-jawed couch jockeys doesn't always go down so well on the big screen and Gondry's cinematic record - the new film follows Human Nature, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and the Dave Chapelle documentary Block Party - isn't exactly spotless. But it is, at least, interesting.
This was always promised by the restless, radical creativity permanently on display in his music videos, and which leaked out when, inevitably, he was called on by the TV commercials industry. His work is marked by outrageously surreal jokes, strongly marked spatial gimmicks (repeated movements, fractured framing, duplicate images, that sort of thing) and an animator's fascination for insanely complex design. Comparisons with Spike Jonze are easy to make: both have a gift for the simple-but-brilliant, knock-em-flat idea, but where Jonze relies on a deadpan, frat-boy humour, Gondry regularly plays the Euro clown card, like MTV's answer to Jacques Tati.
So, in honour of the new flick, premiered at London's NFT tonight, here's some suggestions for your very own laptop film festival of Gondry's finest moments.
1. Oui Oui Gondry first got into film-making by creating promos for the "multidimensional band" Oui Oui, for whom he played drums. Here's the one he did for Les Cailloux in 1989, a cute little animated story of the band's day out chucking stones in a forest.
2. La Lettre Another first for Gondry: his first attempt at straight (ish) live action drama, made in 1998 as a commission for French TV, part of a series called Waiting for Year 2000" There's a clear autobiographical element here: it's about a young, photography-obsessed kid, summoning up the courage to approach a girl he likes. It's stripped-down, intense black-and-white stuff - until an extraordinary dream sequence involving a giant camera and the Eiffel tower.
3. Drum and Drumber A deadpan short film in the Spike Jonze vein, with Gondry hammering away at his drum kit in assorted New York City locations. In itself, it's funny and a bit odd. However, it paves the way for...
4. The Hardest Button to Button One of Gondry's most extraordinary music videos. The replication of White Stripes band members Jack and Meg White is directly controlled by the beat and mathematics of the track itself. 5. Come into my World Another example of Gondry's peerless mastery of the motion control camera. Kylie Minogue's saunter through suburban Paris turns into an Escher-drawing of seeming endless replication and self-reflexiveness.
6. Smirnoff Gondry's ability to pull off elaborate special-effects trickery naturally made him a hot ticket in advertising. Here's the vodka commercial that was a fixture in cinema commercials packages in 1998.
7. GAP 1, GAP 2, GAP 3 Gondry also really did the business for GAP's winter collection in 1999. He shot three ads for the clothing company, yoking playful visuals to a happy fusion of of Sleigh Ride and Ice Ice Baby. Obviously, they have a lot in common with...
8. Let Forever Be Arguably the high point of Gondry's music-promo career, the Chemical Brothers provided the soundtrack for his attempt to invent what he called "cubist cinema" - echoing the fractured planes and multiple viewpoints of the early 20th-century master painters.
9. Pecan Pie Proving that Gondry isn't immune to making an idiot of himself, this demonstrates the perils of having too much time on your hands. During the filming of Eternal Sunshine, Gondry filmed Jim Carrey careering around the night-time streets on a motorised bed, lipsynching to Elvis. It's much less funny than it sounds.
10. One Day... A lot better than the above. Gondry himself acts in this weird little short, as a lavatory-user pursued by his own fascistic faeces. Comedian Dave Cross plays the Nazi turd. Gondry likes working with comics, as Block Party later confirmed.
And an honourable mention...
Lady (Hear Me Tonight) This wonderful music video - a three-minute, 21st century answer to Jules et Jim - wasn't directed by Gondry, but by François Nemeta, Gondry's assistant director on a bunch of late-90s promos (including Daft Punk's Around the World). Nemeta had learned well.
