If we consider “The Green Hornet” as a studio “one for them” gig for the helmer, it’s been nearly four years since the last bonafide Michel Gondry feature effort, “Be Kind Rewind.” Thankfully, though, it looks like the inspired Frenchman has a couple of projects up his sleeve having spent last fall shooting “The We & I,” a kids-inspired drama now in post-production, with another one in “Mood Indigo” (formerly known as “The Foam of Days“) in the works and set to feature the powerhouse French cast of Audrey Tautou, Romain Duris, Gad Elmaleh and Léa Seydoux.
One more thespian has now joined the latter project as Screen Daily reports that Omar Sy (“Micmacs,” “The Intouchables“) has come aboard in an unknown role for the adaptation of Boris Vian‘s 1947 novel, “L’ Ecume des jours.” The story follows Colin, the wealthy inventor of an olfactory musical instrument, the pianocktail. He marries Chloe, but unfortunately, she falls ill during their honeymoon thanks to a water lily that enters her lung, and the only way to treat the ailment is to surround her with flowers — and the expense soon drains his funds. So pretty much the perfect fantastical, philosophical material for Gondry.
Duris will star as Colin with Tautou as Chloe, while Seydoux will play a character named Alise (according to IMDb anyway). Interestingly both Sy (his recent film ‘Intouchables’ took France by storm) and Elmaleh (who had small parts in “Midnight in Paris” and ‘Tintin‘) are noted for their background in stand-up comedy so it will be interesting to see how much of their comedic skills are brought to the film. Lensing is set to begin this April.
Gondry’s “The We & The I,” meanwhile, has mostly been a mysterious project featuring non-actors, with the plot said to be centering on a group of kids who travel into the future by mistake and discover a machine that keeps people younger. However, that premise was noted to be the synopsis “for now,” suggesting that it was possibly in flux. Cineuropa now have updated the logline noting that the Bronx-set drama “follows high school students on the bus home on the last day of the school year [and] is a sort of study of group dynamics and the evolution of relationships as the bus gradually becomes emptier” with newcomers leading the project, including Michael Brodie, Teresa L. Rivera and Brandon Diaz. The new synopsis definitely makes it sound a little more grounded, but we still wonder if those sci-fi aspects will still come into play.
“The film brings out what we love most in Gondry’s films: the energy and the emotion,” Kinology‘s Gregoire Melin revealed to Variety at the European Film Market, where they picked up the international sales rights. “The actors collaborated on the writing of the script but what you see in the film is what’s in the script. There’s no improvisation.” The first footage from the film will apparently be screened “a few weeks before the Cannes Festival.” Is that a roundabout way of saying it’ll premiere on the Croisette? We’ll see.
