Castleton International Film Festival: Mood Indigo

Long thought unfilmable, Boris Vian’s 1947 cult novel—which translates literally as “The Foam of Days”—is charmingly adapted by Michel Gondry, who fills the screen with his trademark whimsical touches. The central narrative of Mood Indigo concerns the ultimately tragic love story of Colin (Romain Duris), an exceptionally wealthy man who inhabits a spectacular rooftop apartment/playhouse, and Chloé (Audrey Tautou), a physically frail woman he meets a at party. Yet theirs is no ordinary courtship: Colin and Chloé travel across Paris in a cloud-shaped vessel, sip beverages from a cocktail-mixing piano, and dine on elaborate concoctions prepared by Nicolas (Omar Sy), Colin’s in-house chef and lawyer. Although Gondry has been celebrated for his inimitable mise-en-scène ever since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), here he takes production design to a whole new level, deftly mixing stop-motion animation and digital special effects. For all its visual splendor, though, Mood Indigo never loses sight of the great romance shared by its main characters—bonds that deepen when Chloé is diagnosed with a life-threatening malady: the growth of a water lily in one of her lungs.