An odd young director tries everything to shoot a masterpiece. A comedy from world-famous dreamer Michel Gondry.
Marc (Pierre Niney) decides to shoot a great film with a large creative team and a major studio. When the producers reject his idea, he takes his work so far and the equipment and what’s left of his crew and moves in with his aunt Denise (Françoise Lebrun) in a French village. Marc’s explosive character, his refusal to take his tablets, and a prolonged creative crisis soon lead to conflict with his remaining colleagues. But the director is unbowed. With or without them he will make the film, even if he goes gray in the process.
The new film by French maestro Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep, Mood Indigo), his first in eight years, which was shown at Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 2023, has been long awaited by fans. Gondry is an artist who loves the DIY aesthetic, hypersensitivity, and the poetic power of dreamers who save themselves from a cruel world. The main character in his new film, director Marc, is this type of person. The depiction of procrastination as an integral part of the creative process is one of the delights of The Book of Solutions, and the title of the film refers to another of Marc’s projects, a notebook with important texts to help creative people rid themselves of doubts and become successful. It is no accident that Gondry chose this theme. He too «ran away from» tyrannical producers during the post-production of the Mood Indigo, and the place of creative shelter in the film is the actual house of Gondry’s aunt, to whom the film is dedicated. In The Book of Solutions, the director creates his alter ego, a person who is both charming and in constant search of something.
The film will be screened in French with Russian subtitles.
The Book of Solutions
Director Michel Gondry
France, 2023, 102 min. 16+