Audrey Tautou and Romain Duris in Mood Indigo (Drafthouse Films)

Watching Mood Indigo is a curious experience—not an unusual description for a Michel Gondry film. He is maybe the most playful of the visually daring directors working today with his stop-motion sequences, use of rear projection, giant props, and his meticulous attention to production design, Here it’s especially so. You may be fooled into thinking after the first half hour that the entire story will be full of romantic whimsy (or Whimsy, with a capital “W”). But when it becomes dramatic, it gets dark and almost falters. In a sense, the film is split in half

The opening scenes feel like a French production of Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Romain Duris plays Colin, who lives in an apartment where so many little things are alive—literally, the doorbell alarm is like an insect that moves up and down the walls when it rings. A mouse roams the apartment, played by a man in a mouse costume; the animated food, prepared by Colin’s chef-cum-roommate Nicolas (played in a cheerful performance by Omar Sy), moves about; and Colin has a machine, the Pianocktail, a piano that makes cocktail drinks depending on the tune. Life, in short, is carefree and fun, though Colin’s friend, Chick (Gal Elmaleh), is a downbeat sort of chap obsessed with the writings of Jean-Sol Parte, the existential writer (ho ho).

When Colin is invited to a party, he meets Chloé (Audrey Tautou), and this spurs Colin to mention how she reminds him of Duke Ellington—though the way he says it to her is mixed up, awkward, and hilarious. Gondry mixes the fantastical in the drab modern world when Colin and Chloé, on a date, go for a ride in a swan-shaped car that floats (by construction wire, of course) over Paris.

Soon after they get married and something bad happens to Chloé, and the story takes a turn. Yet the film is full of humor and warmth (until it isn’t). There are times, mostly early on, where Gondry is so in love with the crazy little eccentricities of a place, of a moment on a street, that I thought “Okay, enough already.” But perhaps that’s not fair. This is, after all, a Michel Gondry movie, part of a genre unto itself (think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or The Science of Sleep).

What helps keep the movie together is that Duris and Tautou, who have co-starred in a few movies before (most recently in Chinese Puzzle), have a strong, fun chemistry, and they don’t come off as too precious or cute. There’s an air of innocence that first marks their relationship so that when conflicts emerge, the two are still compelling to watch because of their depth as actors.

Another facet is how Gondry, via the original 1947 novel by Boris Vian, views work and money. One problem that comes up for Colin is that his money starts drying up as Chloé becomes sick from a strange illness. As with so much else in the film, her health deteriorates in stop-motion: a snow flake falls into her lungs and freezes everything inside. Colin also keeps giving money, for a reason that’s not clear (it’s also unclear how he has all this money) to his friend Chick, who can’t stop his Jean-Sol Parte obsession. So, he has to go to work, and his job is rather ridiculous and cruel—he’s one of several men on top of dirt anthills using their male warmth to power up weapons. As his apartment starts to waste away (as if it’s a living organism, the windows are draped in a kind of webby residue) so does the color of the film, which drains scene by scene until the final passages are in black and white.

This is, actually, and deceptively from the looks of the trailer and poster, a melodrama, but Gondry is too inventive with his designs and creations to let his film become dead somber in the sense of, say, Amour. At the same time, nothing is ever explained exactly (it isn’t on Pee-wee’s Playhouse either, now that I think of it), which makes it a little frustrating when, dramatically speaking, ALL of the initial brightness disappears and the film ends without any denouement. Mood Indigo is a good movie, romantic but kind of tough deep down. It’s also very funny, for the surprises it offers in every other shot. I just wish it was as tonally consistent as his best works.