The Science of Sleep

The Science of Sleep is a mildly surreal film, which is perfectly suited to the storyline. Stéphane Miroux moves back into his childhood home after his father passes away.  One day on his way to work he finds himself helping a neighbour move a piano into their apartment and injures his hand in the process. The neighbour, Stéphanie invites him in and her friend, Zoé dresses his hand. He is initially attracted to Zoé but soon turns his attention to Stéphanie. He hides the fact that he is actually a neighbour due to awkwardly hearing his new neighbour make disparaging remarks about their landlady who also happens to be his mother. Stéphanie though is made aware early on that he is actually is her neighbour, long before he discoverers that she knows. He has a hard time separating his dreams and reality and this plays through out the film eventually also leaving the viewer confused as to what is a dream and what is reality too, so we really get an insight to his confusing and frustrating world. It becomes very clear how much of a problem this is and how much it's impacting his life, which already appears to be socially difficult. He suffers a bout of sleep walking where he writes an embarrassing and somewhat confusing note to Stéphanie and slips it under her door. He wakes up and realises what he has done and retrieves it with a coat hanger unaware that she has already read it. As the film goes on the dreams and reality become more entwined and the relationship between Stéphane and Stéphanie becomes more strained.
The movie incorporates stop-motion animation and other interesting visual techniques both in the dream sequences and also in the more mundane reality.

The film is unusual but also very interesting. Recommended.

Little Miss Sunshine

Never judge a book by it's cover, and never judge a movie by it's title (or the DVD cover). Here is a film that fell off my radar when I first heard about it simply because of it's title. It sounded like some cutesy child-worshipping family movie. Well it is a bit cutesy and it is about a family but it's not the drivel it sounded like (to me) at all.
It's a comedy/drama that centres on a road trip that a slightly dysfunctional family makes across 2 states in a volkswagan minivan to get Olive, the young daughter to the "Little Miss Sunshine" Beauty pageant that she has qualified for. The family also consists of Richard, the father who is an aspiring but rather annoying motivational speaker. Sheryl, the mother. Dwayne, a gawky teenage son (but aren't they all), who has taken a vow of silence until he achieves his dream of joining the Airforce. Frank, an uncle, Sheryl's brother, who is a scholar under supervision for having recently attempted suicide, and Richard's father, Edwin, a foul-mouthed WW2 vet who was kicked out of his retirement home for snorting heroin.
They take the road trip because they cannot afford to fly, and the whole family goes because they can't leave anyone behind. The trip has a series of setbacks starting with various mechanical faults in the vehicle that cannot be fixed in the short time that they have to get to the pageant. The way that everything goes wrong causing the family to have to employ ridiculous solutions just to keep going was both painful and amusing to watch and most of all very easy to relate to probably for all of us. When things go wrong, they all go wrong at once. I know I've felt just like that a few times this year in my transition from paid worker to poor student. Their situation is tragic yet it's also heart-warming as it pulls the family together as they have to rely on one another. Their problems don't stop there, each member has a personal setback and when they finally get to their destination they almost don't get in as they are five minutes late. I'm not going to spoil the story so I'll just say that it's a highly amusing movie and a guaranteed great night's viewing.