Audrey Tautou and Romain Duris in “Mood Indigo”
“MOOD INDIGO” My rating: C (Opens May 8 at the Alamo Drafthouse Mainstreet)
94 minutes | No MPAA rating
“Mood Indigo” is so aggressively French — not just French, but avant garde, let’s-blow- Gauloise-smoke-up-our-asses French — that I’m not sure that citizens of any other country should subject themselves to it.
The latest from the ever-eccentric Michel Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) starts out like an episode of “PeeWee’s Playhouse” and ends up like one of Ingmar Bergman’s uber-dark meditations on mortality.
The first half — the “fun” half — unfolds in the Paris world of Colin (Romain Duris), a child/man who lives in what appears to be a subway car slung between two tall buildings. Colin is a Duke Ellington-obsessed inventor (thus the film’s title). Among his Rube Goldberg-ish creations is an upright piano which mixes cocktails, the ingredients and proportions determined by which jazz classic is being played.
Colin’s household is a wonder. Live eels squirm out of the kitchen tap, his meals (thanks to stop-action animation) come to life on the table, and a mouse (an actor in an animal suit) grows fresh veggies in a greenhouse fashioned from an old microwave oven.
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