Michel Gondry returns to the Cannes Film Festival for the first time since 2012’s “The We And The I” with “The Book Of Solutions,” his first film in seven years. And in the days before his new movie’s premiere in the Director’s Fortnight section on May 21, Gondry talked with THR and IndieWire about why he took so long between 2015’s “Microbe & Gasoline” and his latest feature. In short, it has a lot to do with his real-life difficulty completing his 2013 film “Mood Indigo,” which serves as the story basis for the film about to premiere.
“The Book Of Solutions” follows Pierre Niney‘s director Marc, a thinly-veiled Gondry surrogate, as he drives his cast and crew crazy trying to finish a film. As Marc’s ambitions grow increasingly erratic, he alienates everyone around him, from his longtime editor to his Aunt, whose house in a small village Marc drags the shoot to. But the chaos also prompts Marc to write a book of creative advice that also serves as an apology to his friends, family, and crew members. Gondry lifts plenty of anecdotes from his frustrating time finishing up “Mood Indigo” as inspiration. “The Book Of Solutions” also stars Françoise Lebrun, Blanche Gardin, Vincent Elbaz, and Camille Rutherford.
Gondry sees “The Book Of Solutions” as a comedy, even as what he bases the film on was a largely vexing creative period in his life. “It is comical, but from the point of view of Marc, it’s not comical — everything is as serious as can be,” the director explained to THR. “But it does come from my own experiences — some of the stuff I did, some I didn’t. It was quite personal. But the things I did weren’t just random, they were made with my heart, and I had the belief that they were groundbreaking. It wasn’t just fooling around. All the time, it was super important. So I thought it would be fun to try to show that.”
But Gondry also wants the film to depict his creative frustrations realistically. “Well, it was actually based on a moment in my life when maybe I wasn’t so nice,” he continued to THR. “But Marc does care about other people. He just thinks that all the other little things he does are of more importance.” But Gondry also told IndieWire that he wanted to depict just how annoying he was to work with as he was wrapping “Mood Indigo.” “I had this megalomaniac feeling of being a part of history,” said the director, referencing a scene in “The Book Of Solutions” when Marc abandons the film’s production to make instead a doc about an ant, something Gondry really did. “It was difficult for everyone else because they could not understand why I was triggered by little things,” Gondry explained, “but I could find universes inside them.”
So imagine “The Book Of Solutions” as a mea culpa of sorts for Gondry to his colleagues. “The problem is that, after a while, you feel that your apologies have no meaning,” Gondry told IndieWire about his time finishing up “Mood Indigo.” “I talked to my editor from that time. I asked her what her main feeling was towards me, and she said she was worried even though we had the most intense arguments. They were good people, and they cared about me beyond what was happening at the moment.” Gardin plays Marc’s editor in Gondry’s new film, and much of their combative rapport onscreen comes from the director’s relationship with Marie-Charlotte Moreau, his long-time editor. In the case of “The Book Of Solutions,” the truth is stranger than fiction.
Despite the seven-year gap between Gondry’s latest and “Microbe & Gasoline,” the director has stayed busy. Gondry told THR that he made several animated shorts with his daughter, now 8, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and also worked on a movie about the dog Rin Tin Tin before abandoning the project. But in the end, I realized I didn’t like the dog and was concerned it might bite me,” the director explained, “So I gave up on the project.” Before the pandemic, Gondry directed Jim Carrey in the Showtime series “Kidding,” which lasted two seasons before getting cancelling in July 2020.
And more recently, the director served on the Oscar submission committee for France, which he didn’t enjoy. “It felt like they were choosing films that could win and not because they were the best films,” Gondry told IndieWire about the experience. “I think that’s a mistake. You have to pick the ones you love. They picked the one they picked because they said it checks all the boxes.” The committee chose Alice Diop‘s “Saint Omer” for France’s Best Foreign Film submission, but the Academy ultimately didn’t select it.
So what does Gondry have set up after “The Book Of Solutions” has its world premiere on la Croisette this weekend? Well, he told IndieWire he’s developing a musical about the life and career of Pharrell Williams, although it may get delayed by the WGA writer’s strike. “It’s a pretty big budget, but it’s still something personal,” Gondry said about the project. Delay or no delay, it sounds like another eclectic choice for Gondry, a director forever unafraid to follow his own whimsy.