Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Colour, 35 mm
USA, 2003, 108 min
Section: Horizons

Synopsis

The life of the lonely and timid Joel fundamentally changes when he meets the eccentric and temperamental Clementine. She is weird in many ways and successfully entices Joel to crazy ventures. She is also unstable and volatile and one day decides to get rid of Joel and start again. To this purpose she submits herself to having her memory expunged in an experimental clinic, and her attempt is so successful that the grief-stricken Joel seizes the same solution. He however is less successful; this time the doctor lets the intervention get out of hand, and the damage is made worse by his assistant who instead of carefully monitoring the activity of the client´s brain, allows him to be led into wild erotic imaginings. The director in a masterly fashion upsets the time and space continuity and replaces it with the associative linking of fragments from different layers of memory. He reconstructs the relationship and repeatedly returns to certain experiences, many of them deformed in their dependence on Joel´s wrought-up emotions.

About the director

Michel Gondry (b. 1963, Versailles, France). As a child he wanted to be a painter and an inventor. He developed his interest in printmaking in the 1980s at art school in Paris. He also got to know the people with whom he founded the pop rock group Oui Oui. Before they broke up in 1992 they made two albums and a number of singles. Gondry was the drummer in the band and filmed it several times, which resulted in a commission from Björk. He made six films for her and others - for example, the group Massive Attack. His commercials (Air France, Coca Cola, Levi´s, Polaroid, Smirnoff) have won top awards. His feature film debut was the comedy Human Nature (2001), on which he worked with scriptwriter Charlie Kaufman.