Perhaps just as great a cliche as the indie that takes itself way too seriously is the indie romance full of way too much fantastical whimsy. The director of “Mood Indigo,” Michel Gondry, is one of the pioneers of this style of 21st Century filmmaking with his film “Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind,” an enduring masterpiece of the 2000s. While he may never recapture the magic of that film, Gondry has returned to his roots in France to adapt a French classic with a story so silly and inventive that it just begs to be liked. “Mood Indigo” unfortunately teeters on charming and insufferable and can’t find solid footing up in the clouds.
“Mood Indigo” is based on a novel by Boris Vian, but this is Gondry’s world, one in which every mundane object in existence has been transformed into a mechanical cartoon of unnecessary complexity and charming artificiality. Telephone operators work on conveyer belts sending messages on typewriters, pet mice are actually tiny people dressed in costumes scurrying around tubing throughout a house, cooks fight to grab eels out of pipes and reach through TVs to add an extra pinch of salt, and our protagonist has invented a piano that makes cocktails based on the melody you perform. Continue reading “Mood Indigo”