Yet instead of cutting some of the novel’s more absurd elements in order to focus on the romantic tragedy at its core, Gondry and co-writer/producer Luc Bossi have decided to take the writer’s words à la lettre, replicating his many literary flights-of-fancy and tossing in everything but the kitchen sink - although there’s one of those too…out of which pops a papier mâché eel (again, during the film’s opening sequence). Burroughs’ The Soft Machine into a sci-fi blockbuster, or Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow into an HBO miniseries. Granted, transforming Vian’s experimental 1947 book into a comprehensible narrative is a little like trying to turn William S. The experience is rather like watching a very long, very expensive (the film was budgeted at €18M, or $23M) episode of Pee-wee’s Playhouse that’s been co-directed by Terry Gilliam and Salvador Dali, and Gondry pummels the viewer with a two-hour-plus visual assault that’s easier to admire than it is to enjoy.Ī wide local rollout by Studiocanal should see strong first-frame returns, but this surreal semi-period piece has little staying power, while overseas action will be concentrated in Francophone territories and art house markets where the Gondry label still means something.
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