Of all the directors who made the jump from music videos to feature-directing during MTV’s ’90s peak, Michel Gondry is the sole name whose work hasn’t been able to fully escape from the shadow of early pop promos. His hyper-stylized clips for artists ranging from Daft Punk to the White Stripes revealed a fondness for tactile meticulousness, shorts with an elaborate design where you could often feel the artist’s hand bringing them to life––in some cases quite literally seeing his hands shape the design. Aside from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind––a perfect narrative vehicle for his sensibility due to how its protagonist’s warped memories allowed the director to briskly jump from one visual conceit to the next––Gondry’s films have only ever recaptured this spirit in short bursts, if at all. You’d probably be forgiven for not knowing he directed the forgotten Seth Rogen vehicle The Green Hornet, and it’s somewhat safe to assume his Pharrell musical Golden was scrapped at his behest for a similar lack of authorial identity.
Running at a whisker over an hour, Maya, Give Me a Title is the most a Gondry film has lived up to the promise of his breakthrough short-form work in decades, rejuvenating his creative spirit while a minor work in intention. A selection of animated shorts made to entertain his young daughter while they lived on separate continents, all inspired by one-sentence prompts she wanted to hear stories about, the very broad boundaries set for him––both in the vagueness of each narrative concept and infinite possibilities for animation, even on this handmade scale––offer a reminder of why his breakneck imagination felt so revelatory a few decades earlier.
Fantastical animation sees him return to the barest of essentials; though Pierre Niney’s voiceover stresses that the animations were only possible using modern video-editing software, the hand-drawn character designs and wide array of backgrounds couldn’t be mistaken for the most basic of free graphic-design tools. This is a key source of Maya‘s charm: as voiceover storytelling frequently goes on tangents and left-field turns, the director’s hands come into frame, chopping and changing his creations at will. It has the delightfully ramshackle feel of a father hastily improvising a chaotic story for his daughter, ignoring plot logic as he invents details on the spot, even though he likely spent days bringing each tale to life.
At a time when phone manufacturers boast products utilizing AI that can manipulate user’s photos or videos with ease, Gondry’s film suggests a necessary rebuke to that soulless advance. Maya is, indirectly, a work about using technology to create something unmistakably personal, which no app could generate with anywhere near the same effect. You may not possess equal artistic skills, but neither does the generative intelligence designed to help users create beyond their wildest dreams. If you want to build something that will resonate––or simply amuse your daughter––nothing is going to rival your imagination. Gondry doesn’t have many more tools at his disposal than the audience, and even if he’s more adept at bringing his wildest thoughts to life, he’s still effective at conveying that you don’t need more than the bare minimum to create at his level.
I am admittedly dancing around the overall quality of the stories themselves, which, over the course of the hour, gradually wore down my patience despite their range of subjects and narrative brevity. Some––such as a Parisian Earthquake adventure, or the autobiographical, mockingly melancholic short made in response to his daughter saying she didn’t want him to make any more films for her––are endearingly chaotic, frequently changing track like a panicked father worried about sustaining his daughter’s attention for more than a minute. But sustaining audience attention with the breakneck pacing of several shorts played out consecutively, even with a runtime so brief as 61 minutes, is a more daunting assignment that doesn’t quite cohere. I imagine any of these tales would be charming if viewed as an individual short, but burning through what might be the very best of Gondry’s homemade back catalog at such a rapid pace leaves the engine running out of steam far faster than it should.
I suspect younger children with more hyperactive imaginations would be warmer to it. But despite the child-friendliness, Maya is firmly pitched towards their parents. Above all else, this is a snapshot of a very particular time in childhood when young minds are at their most unrestrained and inquisitive, a period that parents will spend most of their kids’ lives reflecting on and asking them, to endless confusion and embarrassment, if they remember. We only hear from Maya in very brief intervals offering up prompts, but the project feels like Gondry’s attempt to meet his daughter at the level of boundless curiosity associated with her age group. If I were a parent, perhaps I’d revel in the unabashed, childlike silliness told from an informed older perspective. As it stands, I found myself appreciating everything about the earnest creative intent while getting more than a little exhausted.
Maya, Give Me a Title makes its North American premiere at the New York International Children’s Film Festival on March 2 and 16.