Michel Gondry weekend

Michel Gondry is a filmmaker in a class of his own. He is a creator with a playground sense of wonder, where stories are invented out of nothing, a way of looking at things first, and the magic formula ‘it looks like it could be...’. And then there's Gondry, a creative engineer, a Professor Tournesol pop, like all those cinema pioneers who gave their credentials to special effects by inventing improbable machines to produce magic.

A Gondry weekend is what we're proposing, in four films and four stations. A journey of escape. With that touch of madness that we call sweet and that invites us to be enchanted. Not dreaming of another world, but looking at the world through slightly different eyes. Imagination in power.

L’Écume des jours
Michel Gondry
2013, Fr. 125 min. Coul. DCP.

When Boris Vian's famous cult novel L'Écume des jours stimulated Michel Gondry's already bubbling imagination. A writer's linguistic discoveries transposed, translated and reinvented by a filmmaker who's a master of tinkering. It's as if certain books were made for certain directors. An idle, well-to-do young man, shy and romantic, meets a young woman who is the very embodiment of a Duke Ellington blues. An idyllic marriage turns tragic when Chloé falls ill with a water lily growing in her lungs...

• Saturday 15 February at 2pm

Microbe and Diesel
Michel Gondry
2015, Fr. 103 min. Color. DCP.

And Gondry invents microludic cinema... When, as the holidays approach, the dreamy Microbe and the turbulent Gasoil build their own car with a few planks and a lawnmower and set off to conquer the roads of France. A mini-odyssey from a child's perspective, based on Michel Gondry's personal memories. Somewhere between delicate realism and unbridled fantasy, it's a highly personal work marked out by the milestones of the teenage film. The result is a funny road movie that runs on emotion while celebrating the power of imagination.

• Saturday 15 February at 4pm

Le Livre des solutions
Michel Gondry
2023, Fr. 102 min. Color. DCP.

An excellent Pierre Niney trapped in his neuroses and offbeat universe. A perfect alter ego for filmmaker Michel Gondry, this is an autofiction of rare sincerity. The sum film of a filmmaker who condenses his anxieties, his ambitions, his dreams and his love of getting by. Marc flees with his entire crew to a small village in the Cévennes to finish his film at his aunt Denise's house. Once there, chaos ensues, and the director sets about writing The Book of Solutions, a practical advice guide that could well be the solution to all his problems.

• Sunday 16 February at 2pm

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Michel Gondry
2003, USA. 110 min. Color. DCP. VOSTF.

The deconstruction of a romance. In Jim Carrey's head and certainly in Michel Gondry's too. At Lacuna, memories are erased using curious computers. A godsend for couples who no longer love each other. But technology can't predict everything, and Joel stubbornly refuses to forget Clementine. An intriguing story with endless twists and turns. Gondry's inventiveness and the ingenuity of Charlie Kaufman's multi-layered screenplay in the service of an unforgettable quest for memories. Are we ready to erase a painful history from our memories?

• Sunday 16 February at 4pm

All practical information: La Cinémathèque de Toulouse