Returning with his first film in nearly a decade, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director Michel Gondry debuted The Book of Solutions at Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. While the meta film, following a director (Pierre Niney) in a creative rut while in post-production on a new feature, is still seeking U.S. distribution it’ll arrive in France this fall and now the first trailer and poster have arrived.
Savina Petkova said in her Cannes review, “Gondry has retained the playful tone and occasional despair found in his equally whimsical Mood Indigo and The Science of Sleep, even as his newest is, by comparison, more rooted in the realities of film production and mental illness. Niney plays a typified neurotic male auteur––a stand-in for Gondry himself, and this personal touch pays off in the sympathy audiences cannot help feeling for Marc. The film is also a tribute to the director’s own aunt Suzette, imagined here as the patient Denise (Françoise Lebrun), the guiding light and moral corrective who’s there to rein Marc in and make sure he picks up the pieces after yet another emotional episode. With her help, he learns to balance megalomania, egoism, and acceptance.”
Watch below, and for English subtitles, one can enable the auto-generated ones via YouTube for now.
The Book of Solutions opens on September 13 in French cinemas and is still seeking U.S. distribution.