The royal We – Jeff Roedel reviews Michel Gondry’s latest film The We and the I

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Since his fanciful failure The Science of Sleep, a post-brilliance pass he was given after the artistic triumph that was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, French director Michel Gondry has spent the past seven years in a creative wilderness, trying his hand at big budget action (The Green Hornet), an esoteric familial documentary (The Thorn in the Heart), and a dated misstep disguised as a buddy comedy (Be Kind Rewind), and with it all not making a single stride out from the shadow of Sunshine, his Oscar-winning collaboration with screenwriter Charlie Kaufman.

The good news is that with The We and the I, Gondry’s sharp new dramedy that hitches a bus ride through The Bronx with a gaggle of teens after their last day of school, the filmmaker as a kind of prankster visionary is back in full force. It’s not that The We is a landmark film, but its easy meter, quiet ambition and, oh, probably a dozen memorable characters, make it a very welcome return. Most of all, unlike Science of Sleep, a fantasy trip that showed Gondry’s considerable creativity maxing out at the seams, in all but a few late-film moments, The We feels gloriously effortless.

Bathed in tasty late ’80s hip hop (mostly by Young MC), bully bravado and does-he-like-me anxiety, the film is a collision of story arcs and motivations that play out in what is essentially real time as these public school students are dropped off at their stops and summer begins. It’s an up-close examination of workings of high school cliques and power struggles looking square in the face the dangerous, often irony-laced socialization of self and the almighty pressures to conform.

The film stars real-life students. Gondry interviewed them and their parents extensively to compile plot points and thematic threads for his script that zooms thrillingly along until a tragic off-screen incident triggers a tonal shift and a focus on extensive monolog and overly confessional conversation that can’t help but to ring less true than the breakneck banter of the first half of the film. It’s a necessary evolution for the story, but it came with great risk, and the last 20 minutes, though they reveal a greater depth to two of the lead characters, are not a complete success.

Still, Gondry ferments in his film a number of moments of shear beauty and sly humor, and for the most part, his first-time actors are natural and charismatic on camera—even the ones playing profusely antagonistic personas. Gondry turns 50 next month. If he’s finally found a new muse nearly a decade after his masterpiece, a new way of making films, modeling his future efforts on the blueprint he has rendered with The We and the I ought to produce a tremendously unique body of work that can stand on its own, Sunshine or no.

Watch the trailer for The We and the I below: