Maybe it's good that you've split up with your boyfriend. It makes you available for other people. Sometimes I think all the pretty girls are taken, it's like when you're late for a party and there's no alcohol left

Here's the thing about the heart-wrenching, tummy-twisting opus that is Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind: as fantastical and tweaked as the concept for the movie is, it's the most realistic portrayal of a relationship I've ever seen on film. If you're looking for an easy feel good trip, this ain't it. Clementine (Kate Winslet) was going out with Joel (Jim Carrey), but they split up, she couldn't handle the pain, so she trundled off to a company specialising in wiping specific painful memories or people from your increasingly cluttered brain tubes. Joel finds out about Clementine's wipeage and goes in for the same treatment, except halfway through, just as the most intense, poignant memories of her are about to get zapped, he changes his mind, realises the depth of his love and finds a way to dupe the process.

A friend took me to see it the night before I had to sit down with the director, Michel Gondry. I'd been dumped a few days earlier and I cried for half the film, big juicy tears. But I felt hopeful. This film captures every irksome nuance of a long-term relationship, but also all the head spinny slivers of love that occur in the mundane. Moments you should take notice of instead of moaning out of the corner of your mouth when really you're in love, and you're in for the long haul.

When I sat down with Gondry the next morning I was still feeling raw as a salted slug, but it made it easier that I'd interviewed him the month before with a colleague for his genius DVD of music videos. We started talking about relationships and then he played me this song that's going to be in his next film. It was written about a cat, by this girl who rescues cats for a living. Gondry placed the headphones on my ears and told he told me to listen to it like she was singing to a boy, not a cat. So, I shed a tear or four. And it was embarassing and unprofessional, but when you're heart hurts, sometimes shit like that happens.

I saw your movie last night and cried for an hour.

It's fucked up, but I'm glad you cried. I'm sorry, what's wrong with you?

I split up with my boyfriend.

Maybe it's good that you've split up with your boyfriend. It makes you available for other people. Sometimes I think all the pretty girls are taken, it's like when you're late for a party and there's no alcohol left. Sometimes you think, 'I'm this age and all the girls I see are taken and are in relationships'. Sorry I'm being stupid. Don't lead your ex-boyfriend to believe that you don't like him because that's not going to make him like you less. That's important. I was already dumped when I met you the first time, by the girl who is in my DVD. Since then I made myself fall for another girl who was not so pretty and I really thought I could love her, but it made it even worse. I thought she really liked me, but she didn't. Now she doesn't even want to talk to me because she's concerned I will have a hope. It doesn't make me feel better, or like her less; it just makes me go crazy.

When I was a child I had an operation and they had to put me to sleep with gas. Everyone was horrible and I kept trying to push the mask off me. They said, 'If we give him some oxygen it will give him a hope.' But they did it anyway, they gave me oxygen for five seconds and then they put back the gas and I went to sleep. It made me trust them a little, made me less scared, it made me stronger. It sounds a bit crude, but it's an example I always remind myself in these situations. A lot of people don't want to be nice because it will give you a hope and then hope will be broken and you will be more heartbroken. It doesn't necessarily work like that. I wish that girl would be nicer to me, then I will feel more confident and I will like her a little less, she will feel less like she's hurting me. Little by little the balance will come back.

But I didn't break up with him.

Oh no! That's true. That's a different situation.

The end of your film is open to interpretation. I'm going to take it as optimistic.

I think so, but it's kind of a mystery. There's this loop at the end repeated three times. Initially it was repeated like 20 times. I wanted it, but Charlie [Kaufman, the screenwriter] didn't. The shot at the end is the most optimistic. If you repeat the loop more times you start to feel it's bitter. For my next film, I wanted to make the character kill himself, but you don't know it, you just see that he is dead. It's the middle of the sentence and it turns black, then it will turn white and people have to leave the theatre. Just cut to black, no music, no credits. People will be angry, but I think it is interesting. I was trying to imagine what it would be like if I was dead, what the feeling would be like, and that was the closest I could think of: a void, just black, then nothing.

Isn't your next movie about controlling your own dreams?

Yes, he tries to control his dreams because he can't control his emotions. I had this very scary dream recently. Do you know Patrick Dewaere? He was a really, really good actor in the 70s and he killed himself, and I dreamt that I was him and I was with a girl who was a mixture of all the girls who broke my heart. I was on the set of this film in the 70s. My girlfriend was going to leave me for another guy, someone more mature. And I was Patrick Dewaere in a movie. I was playing a drug dealer chased by the police and I was trying really hard to please her. And at the end of the dream, the only way I could get rid of the horrible feeling was to smash the car, again and again. And I want to do that in the film, this guy is dreaming that he's Patrick Dewaere. I want Gael Garcia Bernal to play him. In the last scene he becomes a cat.