THE WE AND THE I is a typically divergent change of pace for director Michel Gondry, especially after last year’s uncharacteristically flat superhero yarn THE GREEN HORNET, with the French filmmaker eschewing mainstream filmmaking once more. The result is a bustling tale of adolescence, individuality and the alienating effects of pack mentality, which makes full use of its single location and talented cast of unknowns.

Having been screened at the Directors Fortnight section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, THE WE AND THE I boasts a charming portrait of an assortment of school kids riding the bus home after the last day of term at their Bronx high school. Spread over two parts, entitled ‘The Bullies’ and ‘The Chaos’ respectively, the story begins as a group of teenagers pile onto a bus after the school bell signals their freedom for the summer. Darting back and forth, Gondry pulls into focus each disparate member of this loosely assimilated group sat amongst the regular public commuters (who in turn express their distaste with the youth’s bad language and occasional disregard for others).

…a charming portrait of an assortment of school kids riding the bus home after the last day of term at their Bronx high school.

As the bus careens through the streets, gradually letting passengers off along the way, the film similarly begins to drive deeper into the back-stories and intrinsic links shared between certain characters – teasing out the fading social veneers, hidden depths and emotions of these layered, ethnically diverse characters.

Poignant without over-sentimentality and humorous without undermining the burgeoning pathos, Gondry’s latest is a slowly involving, thoughtful and plausible reflection on the wrenches of adolescence and growing up in a society guided by unwritten rules. Identifiable touches such as the biased rights to claiming the back seat of a bus, victimising – verbally and sometimes physically – the meeker kid and the isolating effects of courting popularity are all given a very genuine amount of room here, adding to an openly and loosely structured narrative. The film shares a likeness to Larry Clark’s scabrous KIDS, only without the sting, and offers a lighter (but just as weighty) alternative to Cronenberg’s COSMOPOLIS through the self-meditation presented by a form of transportation. THE WE AND THE I drips with the contemporary climate, YouTube and the prominence of social networking, while Gondry undercuts this with the zany stylistic flourishes emblematic of his filmmaking.

Gondry’s consciously kinetic and inventive moments serve only to highlight the realism depicted elsewhere, and although he occasionally loses grip of the various strands and characters, this is the best he has been since ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, which is equally as heartfelt.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE0jTAEjNlY