A Parisian Love Story in Forward, and Sideways, Motion, A.O. SCOTT

Michel Gondry's beguiling new film, is so profoundly idiosyncratic, and so confident in its oddity, that any attempt to describe it is bound to be misleading. While points of comparison are available - to Human Nature" and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," Mr. Gondry's collaborations with Charlie Kaufman; to early Surrealist artworks or the later films of Luis Bu..uel's landscapes were. It has, instead, a wide-eyed, picture-book uality, an air of almost aggressive innocence.

After a while, the spell wears off. Not because the film's inventiveness wanes, but because its mood changes, slowly but noticeably, from eager enthrallment to desperation. The gray of daylight seeps in around the edges, and Stephane's dreams become less an escape from the frustrations of ordinary life than another potential source of disappointment. His childlike behavior, especially around Stephanie, begins to seem intemperate and regressive, a petulant refusal to wake up into the rational, adult world.

And so you leave this buoyant, impish movie feeling a little blue: sorry that it had to end and also wishing, perhaps, that it amounted to more. But its fugitive, ephemeral uality is part of its point: dreams, after all, are hard to remember, and perhaps don't hold the meanings they seem to. Without them, though, our minds would be emptier and our lives much smaller. So while The Science of Sleep" may not, in the end, be terribly deep, it is undoubtedly - and deeply - refreshing.

The Science of Sleep" is rated R. It has obscene language, nudity and sexual situations