The picnic in Gondry’s Mood Indigo [L’Écume des jours] is his invention, a goofy addition to Boris Vian’s surrealistic novel L’Écume des jours. * It’s the love story of Colin, who is manic and unpredictable, and Chloe, who is stable until she meets Colin.
Chloe’s fate is fully sealed at their wedding picnic. At Colin’s beckoning, she moves from her side of the picnic table to his side. Under normal circumstances, this might be ordinary. It is visually disorienting because each side of the table is set in a different season. Colin’s side of the picnic table is summery and very green; Chloé’s side is fall and very yellow. Behind Colin is a dense row of trees; behind Chloé is a field of half-harvested wheat.
Colin (Romain Duris) pours wine for Chloé (Audrey Tatou) While Nicholas (Omar Sy) happily looks on.
Their toast is for a long, happy married life. Alas, the rain shower on Colin’s side foreshadows tragedy. When it rains only on Colin’s side of the table, Chloe is undeterred because her side is in the sunshine. Soon after marrying, Chloé contracts Water Lily on the Lung, incurable cancer. Colin tries to save her, but she dies, leaving him brokenhearted and broke.
The food is ordinary and exotic picnic fare. Prepared by Nicholas, Colin’s friend/chef/adviser, there are cherry tomatoes, mustard, bread, and red wine. But no one eats. Chloe approves of the wine but is apprehensive about the uncooked boar’s head.
* It’s variously translated as The Foam of Days, The Scum of Days, or Froth on the Daydream. It was filmed by Charles Belmont as Spray of Days (1968) and retold as an opera by Edison Denisov (1986). The heroine is named after Duke Ellington’s song “Chloe.” Take your pick.
See Michel Gondry. Mood Indigo [L’Écume des jours] (2013). Screenplay by Luc Bossi and Michel Gondry based on Boris Vian’s L’Écume des jours (1947), translated by Stanley Chapman. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013