Surrealist French outing

IF you happen to be in the mood for something completely different, Mood Indigo - a wildly inventive, surrealist yarn from the eternally quirky mind of director Michel Gondry - just might do the trick.

Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004) has gone back to his roots - a Gallic sensibility, a love of jazz music and a notable career as a music video director - to concoct a visually unique cinematic interpretation of Boris Vian's 1947 novel L'Ecume des Jours (Froth on the Daydream). Gondry and producer Luc Bossi wrote the screenplay.

Vian, a significant presence on the French jazz scene, was both a trumpet player and an admirer of jazz greats such as Hoagy Carmichael and Duke Ellington, whose eponymous 1930 composition provides the film with its English language title. In some ways, Mood Indigo's improvisational feel and daring, free-flowing visual style is the movie equivalent of a jazz riff - unfortunately, there are a few too many false notes. The Paris of Gondry's imagination is a colourful pastiche, a magic-realist realm filled with whimsical creatures both human and otherwise, where fun times, cool jazz and sunny dispositions prevail - to begin with, anyway.