A deceased behavioural scientist waiting to enter heaven, a woman with body hair issues and a man raised as an ape each tell separate panels how their lives came to overlap in this offbeat comedy written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Michel Gondry - the team behind 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'. The drama here is not as touching as in their latter collaboration, but the comedy side of 'Human Nature' is just as quirky with eccentricities ranging from laboratory mice who have been taught how to use cutlery to Rhys Ifans mixing up dining manners with his baser human urges. The title of the film is somewhat ironic as the film explores the effects of conditioning - as well as the side effects of repressing what comes naturally. It is not an entirely realistic story as the scientist, played by Tim Robbins, kidnaps a feral Rhys Ifans, found in the woods, and raises him in a glass cage in his laboratory like a guinea pig, but then again, from the gigantic illuminated signs that Robbins uses to teach him how to talk to politely (!) to the somewhat miniature furniture that he gradually crowds his glass cage with, outrageousness seems to be what Kaufman and Gondry are most acutely interested in. Plus, of course, prodding questions of just how much sense conditioning makes and whether we are in life ultimately driven by sexual desires above all else.
Review of Human Nature
