The film is practically impossible to describe: it's a mix of futurist science fiction, fairy tale, allegory, romance and social satire. Its main story line is rather simple though: it involves the romance of Colin (Romain Duris) and Chloé (Audrey Tautou). Colin is a rich young man who loves jazz but hates work and is looking for love which he found at a party: Chloé, a young tender, sensitive, spontaneous, attractive girl, the same as the title of one of Duke Ellington's songs (Song of the Swamp). He quickly fell in love with her, had a fantastic time, got married, went on a honeymoon in the middle of which he discovered that mysteriously she was found with a most rare disease called "nénuphar": she had lotus growing in her lungs ! a disease which could only be cured by dried smelling flowers placed on her naked chest and which restricts her nutritional intake to just two spoonful of liquid food per day and had to take an enormous quantity of metallic pills every day and must have dry flowers rubbed on her chest. He spent his entire fortune on trying to cure her, in sending her to the mountains to have better air and for the first time in his life, selling guns, the second as a security guard of a gold store and the third as the person to tell the patients at a clinic the kind of disease they had. it was only whilst work as such that he discovered the secret that his wife had that mysterious disease.
Colin lives in a train-like compartment within which there are all kinds of magical technical inventions all conceived by his close friend and flat sharer, a lawyer, an inventor Nicola (Omar Sy) and Chick (Gad Elmaleh) who is crazy for all books and all kinds of paraphernalia including his manuscripts, his pipe etc related to Jean-Sol Partre (Jean-Paul Sartre) whose philosophy he doesn't really understand but he would risk all his money on him but unlike Collin, he had to work He loves Alise but he was more passionate about Partre and his name reminds one of another famous black jazz pianist Chick Corea. He's the very opposite of Collin, who is more into living the good life. Alise is a simple girl who loves Chick and also a fondness for the books of Partre and is one of Chloé's best friends to whom she would confide everything, including the fact that sometimes she thought her life would be much happier had she married Collin instead. She's waiting for Chick to propose to her and to encourage him to take the plunge, Colin gives him a quarter of his savings but he never does and eventually, she goes into that bookshop which Chick frequents and kills Partre. Colin has a cook, Nicola, the uncle of Alise, to whom Collin would confide all his secrets. He's a carefree fellow whose passion in life is adventures and doesn't take anything seriously, except his cooking. Unbeknownst to himself, he has merely physical relations with a very rich young lady Isis Ponteauzanne.
What is remarkable about this film is the way Gondry manages to interweave all kinds of impossible sci-fi gadgets which sometimes make one feel as if one were watching the long and complicated operation of those mechanical machines in a Disney cartoon instead of seeing something actually on the screen, thanks to the film technicians and engineers and the surrealistic atmosphere (we actually see the "lotus" in Chloe's lung, the bookseller bookstore being inundated by water but with the books still intact and staying in the shelves without the slightest movement without apparently being soaked, weeds growing at the side of the Collins and Chicks's train-trailer compartment with its sub-marine like bunker bed, a doorbell which can sprout legs and walk when needed, Chloé and Collin being swung around Paris in a giant crane in a bubble like float, shoes which can walk and fit themselves into the feet of Collin and guitars which plays on the rays of the sun as if they were strings etc). The film looks to me an original mix between Alice in Wonderland (there is a mouse man like a kind of genie which seems to mimic the moods of the characters in Colin and Chick'' house) and Modern times, plus Dali's or Margritte's tableaux with its implied criticism of man's preoccupation with technology which threatens to become the master of man's life instead of its servant and which seems to do precious little to help where it really matters: satisfying human relationships. Each of the main characters in the films seem to be suffering a particular kind of character or personality defect and in the end all came to ruin: Chick and Collin both went broke, Chick for his books because to augment his collection, he failed to pay his income tax and was made a bankrupt and then killed when he tried to resist the police coming to execute the court warrant to remove his Partre collections, Colin for his undying love of Chloé and the book seller's store being ruined by Alise out of revenge for stealing the soul and the heart of her beloved Chick, Alise for committing a crime, and Chloé died by her strange disease probably stemming from living the bohemian life of a pure sensory enjoyment in a way which her delicate lung could not support and in the process causing her physical demise and the financial ruin of her husband.The world in which the characters live have an kind of dream-like absurdity to it and yet in a strange way, they somehow feel all more real than real! At the end of the film, the train compartment had become completely overgrown by weeds, its glass filled with filth and everything inside is falling apart, despite the diligent efforts of the mouse-man to prop it up, to repair and to clean it up as much as he could but he too commits suicide when he saw how Collin, who could not even afford a decent burial for Chloé owing to his inability to the young poker face clergyman 200 franc which was all he had, instead of the 2000 they demanded!.The only couple who survive did not have any deep spiritual values,only a physical relationship: Nicola and Isis but they too were not too happy with each other. The "good life" turns out to be a bubble and as fragile as one.
The special effects by Stephane Rozenbaum are simply fantastic, the music good and the acting like those of cartoon characters, which really suits the theme of the film perfectly. Gondry has succeeded in the most difficult task of remaining faithful to Vian's novel except for a tiny flaw, the film lasted more than 2 hours! You never really know what French directors will come up next!
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