A quick glance at Michel Gondry’s career allows us to consider the process of “making” considered in itself as the great existential and artistic motif of this filmmaker. It is an understatement to say that The Book of Solutions hardly strays from this motif, which has already been very useful. It is the cinema itself which serves here as a learning instrument.
The spirit of adventure and tinkering – inherited from a family of nosy musicians and inventors – sticks to the soles of this Versailles native who has carved out a fine reputation in Hollywood (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004; Be sympas, rewindez, 2008; Le Frelon vert, 2011), without however ceasing to cultivate his artisanal spirit, here devoting a documentary to his Cévennes schoolteacher aunt (L’Epine dans le coeur, 2010) or animating there, in 2011, at Center Pompidou transformed into a ministudio, ultra-fast filming workshops accessible to all, everyone leaving with their own little film (thanks again Michel!).
It all begins with a lynching scene. In the posh office of his producers, Marc (Pierre Niney), a feverish, mythomaniac and anxious filmmaker, is severely reprimanded and dispossessed of his working copy. Neither one nor two, he rushes with a team of faithful reduced to the minimum – Charlotte, his editor (Blanche Gardin), and Sylvia, his assistant (Frankie Wallach) – to get their hands on the precious computers and takes off until ‘to the house of Denise (Françoise Lebrun), his good Cévennes aunt and biggest fan, to finish his film as he wishes.
Crazy ideas
Assailed by ideas, convinced of his genius, in an attempt to keep a cool head, he wrote a “book of solutions”, a collection of high-pitched responses to a list of incongruous problems. Problem: Marc’s perpetually feverish brain, who believes, as a demiurge artist but deprived of the support of his financiers, that everything is possible, challenges himself to realize often crazy ideas and puts a very severe test on the nerves of his collaborators. In this regard, if he has in Denise a faithful one in all situations, it is a different story with his team, however attentive they may be.
Angry, confused, impatient, tyrannical, in almost constant inadequacy with reality, Marc commonly makes himself unbearable, but has an unshakeable belief in his project. This is his strength. And, as with all creators, luck, on occasion, is called upon to extend its arms to him: the improbable arrival of Sting on the set here makes up for the setbacks which would otherwise have ended up ruining the director’s reputation.
This manner of self-portrait in zebulon is thus for Gondry the opportunity to recall in an explosive way, but always imbued with an unalterable kindness, this adventurous madness that is the shooting of a film.
