Through Partizan, Gondry has built a commercial and music video reel that is as notable for its innovation as its awards. Levi's "Drugstore" received the Gold Lion at Cannes in 1994, and was one of the director's first attempts at commercial work.

In 1997, "Smarienburg" for Smirnoff claimed the Gold at both Cannes and the Clios. With the success of videos like the Chemical Brothers' "Let Forever Be" and a series of spots shot for Gap's "That's Holiday" campaign, Michel Gondry's feature Human Nature may be one of the most highly anticipated films of the year, certainly amongst the commercial production community.

Human Nature is the director's first feature film starring Patricia Arquette and Tim Robbins. Written by Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich), the film's producers are Anthony Bregman, Julie Fong, Ted Hope, Kaufman and Spike Jonze.

For Gondry, the filmmaking process is an opportunity to embark on a personal journey. "You have a lot of immature feelings that you get from growing up," says Gondry, "through your experience. When you relive them, it's like a sweet sensation."

"When you tell a story, you release this internal bubble of emotion accumulated in your life. If you can mix them all together to tell a big story, it's really satisfying. Then you can share that with other people."

To date, the director's most autobiographical piece is a short film titled "The Letter" in which an innocent boy realizes his love is unrequited. "It's a bit masochistic," reveals the director, "it's about wishing...sadly wishing."

The short is emotive; a device Gondry says is born out of his desire to create a believable narrative. "You get excited because you tell a story that you like and you tell it with images that touch you. The goal, I guess, is to get people to share those emotions; for them to be touched by what you were touched by."

Gondry was taken by the humanity portrayed in Kaufman's script, given to him by director Spike Jonze. "I was really trying to find a script that I enjoyed to read and I read three scripts from Charlie that were very original and very well structured with great characters," says Gondry. "Each time somebody stuck in me, they were just expressing their feelingsin a funny way."

"On top of that [Kaufman's] dealing with the hardest genre, comedy, which is the most established form in a way. You have to follow the words otherwise it's not funny, it's not working. On the other hand it's incredibly original. So it's really challenging to make it work."

Part of the challenge for the director was maintaining the integrity of the characters throughout the editing process. "The main difference [between commercials and film] is that you have to be careful with the balance of things," says Gondry. "If a part of the movie seems a little bit disconnected or dragging, then you perceive the rest of the scenes in thewrong way."

"As well, you have to be consistent with the evolution of character. When I started to shorten the film my main concern was to create human characters not cynical ones," continues Gondry. "I notice a lot of independent American movies play to cynicism and are a little bit condescending to the audience and I really wanted to avoid that."

"I tried to bring a lot of humanity to the characters. It's still quite a harsh story but on a really human level. There's a human reason to do what they do."

The storyline is complicated. Arquette plays Lila, a woman with a skin disease that has rendered her body covered in hair. Lila is involved with a scientist, Nathan, played by Robbins. The pair finds a wild man who has been raised in the woods and together they decide to "civilize" him, an undertaking that exposes many truths and complexities of humankind.

"It's hard to tell the story from a narrative point of view," says Gondry. "It is very structured. It's more about, for instance, how you feel as a woman. A woman has to shave her legs whereas a man can shave or not shave; he's free to do either. But a woman, before she goes out, has to transform herself."

"As well, it's about how sometimes you think you're really helping people by educating them, but you are just giving them the wrong thing."

Integral to the director's creations is innovation, in the same vein as animator and director Norman McLaren, who Gondry cites as one of his influences. "People like McLaren are the experimenters of the medium, the inventors. I make sure when I try anything that I come up with a system or an idea. The fact that I'm trying to find a solution myself is very important to me. I'm not asking people to solve my problem."

"It's trying to solve technical problems, but as well it's always a little geometric kind of riddle," explains Gondry referencing the kaleidoscopic work for the Chemical Brothers and Gap. "I like to solve with experimentation. For instance, I wanted to do a geometrical pattern with people multiplying from one to three to nine; they're forming all that in one motion. It's quite organized. I find complex patterns by using different organization."

"The idea of the Chemical Brothers video was to recreate the choreography reflecting a video effect so it's like one person multiplied like a still reverb and then without transition she releases seven dancers that can come back as an effect, a compression effect as an execution."

"Technically, he's heads and shoulders above everybody else," says Jonze, who began tracking the director's work after seeing the video for Bjork's "Human Behavior."

"He's inventing in-camera techniques. He's inventing ways of using the camera, rigs to use with the camera and post-production techniques all the time. Beyond that, as technically amazing as his stuff is, it has a heart and charm and childlike imagination that is totally his own."