Mood Indigo, film review: Glut of visual gags and kookiness can't help but become grating

(12A) Michel Gondry, 94 mins Starring: Romain Duris, Audrey Tautou

Romain Duris and Audrey Tautou in 'Moon Indigo'

Michel Gondry's relentlessly quirky adaptation of Boris Vian's novel L'écume des Jours sometimes seems like a French art-house version of one of British artist Tony Hart's children's TV programmes of the 1970s.

Eels come slithering out of taps. Pepper pots kiss one another. Characters go for rides in the sky in bubble cars. There is a constant blurring of the lines between live action and animation. (You half expect to see Hart's Morph come popping out of a biscuit tin.)

Gondry is also fascinated by the idea of synaesthesia. The lead character, wealthy bohemian Colin (Romain Duris) takes pleasure in jumbling up the senses of taste, sound and colour. There is a piano that produces cocktails. His romantic fascination with Chloé (Audrey Tautou) is rooted in the fact that she shares a name with one of his favourite Duke Ellington songs. Early on, the kookiness can't help but become grating. There is just too much going on – a glut of visual gags.

However, once Chloé falls ill (with a water lily growing in her lung), the storytelling becomes heartfelt and elegiac. Colin is terrified of losing her and forces himself to confront the possibility of her death. High kitsch it may be but Mood Indigo is certainly a welcome antidote to the usual terminal illness melodrama.