Michel Gondry returns to his native France with a romantic comedy that leaps from French to English as flippantly as it does between fantasy and reality. It is a ride from the opening scene, which I loved. Setting the scene, Stephane (Gael Garcia Bernal) is speaking to camera in his studio. Cardboard boxes are stacked in the shape and form of cameras; egg cartons line the room simulating sound baffles. Stephane is imagining himself to be host of his own TV show. Dubbed The Science of Sleep, this is an imaginary vortex of the unpredictable; a film that plays with you on every level. Highly creative, it is a total original.

Shy but smitten, Stephane falls in love with his beautiful neighbor Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg). But he cannot express his longing for he is trapped by his fear of rejection, a dynamic allowing for dialogue that is rich in its missing connections. “You could sleep with the whole world’s plants and still feel rejected,” Stephane is told. He lives in a world full of bizarre inventions and animations, at one point summoning the courage to show Stephanie his 3-D glasses. “You can see real life in 3-D,” he boasts. “Isn't life already in 3-D?” Stephanie retorts. “Yeah but, come on,” trying to pull Stephanie into his world.

He creates a make-believe time machine that juxtaposes present and past, played out in clever film reverses. Stephanie is sceptical. Stephane persuades her to enter his fantasy: “It's like touching your penis with your left hand.” Stephanie: “I don't have a penis.” Stephane: “But you have a left hand.”

An unglamorous typesetter in a publishing firm, Stephane shares his desire for Stephanie with his work friend. He tells him it must be love because: ‘I wrote a letter to her in my dream and she read it!” Later, they converse while carrying a television set through town. His friend is on his way to the river to dump it because the TV is brainwashing his weekends.

Similarly, Stephane espouses “death to organization”. He is the expression of childhood fanciful innocence; there is no sex; he is totally other world in all things except his “calendar of diasterology”. Here, he draws pictures to celebrate the world’s biggest disasters on each month they occurred. The irony is that this calendar, presented as his first experience of rejection in the world, ultimately becomes his triumph.

Laughter and applause fittingly accompanied the festival's closing night film. For those still with the opportunity: go along for the ride, it is fun.—Jenny Macintyre