HUMAN NATURE (USA/2001/MICHEL GONDRY)

Before working together on Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, acclaimed screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and music video veteran Michel Gondry created this light-hearted comedy. Told through the confessions of its three protagonists, the film concerns a very unusual love triangle between three people who represent a gamut of innate primitivism. Lila (Patricia Arquette) has a hormonal imbalance which leaves her body festooned with hair. After stints as a sideshow act, she changes her life by moving to the great outdoors, living at one with nature until she yearns for the touch of a man. Through a friend she meets Nathan (Tim Robbins), an anal-retentive psychologist whose latest project sees him transferring the disciplinarian manner of his mother to the behaviour of mice. The two have a volatile relationship, pushed to the brink when Lila falls for Rhys Ifan’s libidinous simian Puff, whom Nathan takes under his wing for etiquette training.

Kaufman’s script isn’t in the same league as his best known work, its characters a little underdeveloped for such a farfetched story. Some scenes are almost identical to those in Gondry’s music videos, and this overreliance on the immediacy of music video language is hardly surprising regarding his artistic track record. Nonetheless, it’s a sufficiently entertaining feature with some genuine sweetness. Puff is the only true innocent, the other characters embroiled in the mechanics of infidelity, and his triumphant march at the end of the film rounds off the slightly convoluted story with an invigorating sense of completion and justice.

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (USA/2008/CHARLIE KAUFMAN)

Charlie Kaufman’s outstanding debut as director pushes the creative envelope far beyond my expectation. Working with a cast of some of the top actors in Hollywood today – Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton – Kaufman begins his story in the style of a blasé suburban drama, the quick edits pulling the reins on any significant emotional developments. But after a somewhat puzzling discussion with his marriage therapist, theatre director Caden Cotard (Hoffman) reflects upon his middling oeuvre so far and sets out to produce a piece worthy of his recently-received MacArthur grant, an interminable pet project into which Cotard puts a lot more of himself than he would readily admit. Actors play his lovers and colleagues on a set replicating the New York City landscape, creating a world so similar to Cotard’s own reality that he can distance himself from it sufficiently – or can he? Although this all sounds convoluted and confusing, there is sense to be made, and the ending is highly rewarding, in spite of the slightly maudlin histrionics directly preceding it.

Despite its fickle pace, constant surge of new characters and elaborate structure, Synecdoche, New York is a stark exhibition of one person’s soul, unparalleled in its sharp ingenuity. Although his protagonist struggles fatally with his artistic integrity, Kaufman himself triumphs spectacularly, taking on the dual role of director-writer with tenacity and aplomb. Synecdoche, New York is a wonderfully feverish film which proves its progenitor as one of the few undiluted talents working in the industry today.