San Francisco Frontiers - Eternal sunshine of a troubled mind: Michel Gondry returns

"Microbe and Gasoline" was his last film in 2015 before he went off the radar, with the brilliant music videos and adverts for which he is famous also mostly drying up.

But the 60-year-old filmmaker, based in the US, is back this year at the Cannes Film Festival with the "The Book of Solutions" offering an intimate insight into the mental health struggles behind his long absence.

- Dark times -

And Gondry is not easy on himself, painting a semi-autobiographical portrait of an unstable and often completely unmanageable artist who was tyrannical with his family.

"It was a difficult period in my head, in my behaviour, but at the same time very productive. It was going all over the place," Gondry told AFP after the premiere.

In those dark times "little nuggets" of genius came out, Gondry said, but "for the people who are around, it's exhausting" and many "finally left".

Gondry said he tried to make this difficult and very personal story lighter on screen than the very dark reality.

French star Pierre Niney plays Gondry's alter ego struggling to edit a movie in the film, which is screening in the sidebar Director's Fortnight at Cannes.

"I tried to make (the story) funny but not to erase the difficulty caused to the people around," he said.

After "great suffering" and "megalomania", Gondry said he went down "a big hole" for a year before coming back up again to write and shoot "The Book of Solutions".

"You really have to think about what it will do if you get angry, keep a little humour and not be malicious. I have since learned that."

- Music clips and memory games -

Gondry came to directing through music. His father ran a musical instruments shop in Versailles near Paris, where the young Gondry even built his own drum set from the bits and bobs he collected.

He started making music videos for French stars before moving to the US in the 1990s where he collaborated with some of the hottest stars of the day.

He made eight with Bjork alone, while one of his most famous for "Around the World" (1997) by Daft Punk featured the helmet-clad robots that helped define the French duo's image.

Gondry brought his offbeat humour and madcap style to his first movie, "Human Nature" (2001), with Patricia Arquette and Tim Robbins in a love triangle saga exploring the links between primates and humans.

His real break-out was "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2004) starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, that remains one of best-loved movies of the 21st century.

But subsequent films failed to match its popularity.

Early reviews of "The Book of Solutions" were upbeat, with The Hollywood Reporter finding it "wise and deliciously funny" even if it dipped in the second half.

U.Campbell--SFF