This review is based on a screening at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival.
Personal passions poured out on paper provide a surreal return to form for Oscar-winning writer-director Michel Gondry in The Book of Solutions. After an eight year break between features – during which Gondry directed music videos, television shows, and short films that deepened his creative connections with techno trailblazers The Chemical Brothers and actor Jim Carrey – cinema is set to benefit as he dives into the chaos of creation through the character of medicated filmmaker Marc Becker (Pierre Niney). Falling out with financiers within the first five minutes of The Book of Solutions, Marc takes drastic action, sending his editor Charlotte (Blanche Gardin), producer Sylvia (Frankie Wallach), and intern Gabrielle (Camille Rutherford) out the door with an unfinished film.
By exploring the surreal nature of cinema early on through his visuals, Gondry draws immediate comparisons to his Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind collaborator Charlie Kaufman. Gondry reaches back to his music video roots to incorporate basic animation and moments of stop-motion, allowing audiences a real insight into the character of Marc as he continues to create. Niney also goes all out to express that eccentricity through emotional outbursts against his diehard production team, before branching off into more physical gymnastics when it comes to creating the crucial musical elements of the film.
Beyond these highly strung moments of exaggerated emotion that alienate Marc from everyone, Niney is careful to make himself vulnerable in this leading role – a childlike innocence counterbalances any temper tantrums. There is also some strategic voiceover creating great moments of comedy, as Marc gets his own running commentary that contradicts everything happening on screen. This is also heightened by the work of an understated ensemble cast led by Gardin and Wallach, who add a world-weary resignation to Charlotte and Sylvia as they deal with Marc’s mood swings.
Perhaps the greatest trick Niney pulls off in The Book of Solutions involves earning the audience’s empathy by simply being selfish. It’s achieved not through emotional manipulation, but by going in the other direction and turning Marc into a punchline for everything that goes wrong. This self-destructive pattern that slowly comes to define the character is also the thing that brings people back to him after his unacceptable behavior. A constant need for artistic acceptance combined with the desire to simply be loved by others makes him truly tragic, since not only is Marc unable to know when something is finished, but he dismisses anybody that dares to disagree or share in his vision.
Aside from a towering central performance that genuinely makes this film very funny, it’s worth pointing out how much Gondry embraces the absurd. From creating short films of his aunt Denise (Francoise Lebrun) cooking to converting an old truck into an editing suite on a whim, there is a genuine sense of the inspired genius about Marc that lets us tolerate his full-tilt diva moments and offer our sympathy when his collaborators finally start leaving. This permits Gondry to explore the nature of forgiveness when it comes to creative relationships, and gives The Book of Solutions an emotional depth that goes beyond surrealism as he dives in another direction. Similar in many ways to Adaptation – which saw Kaufman tackle creative conundrums through an onscreen alter ego (and his identical twin) – The Book of Solutions captures a sense of inspired off-kilter energy, but manages to deliver a film with real heart and soul into the bargain.
