The good news for those still scratching their heads over Charlie Kaufman's latest mindfuck is that Eternal Sunshine makes a lot more sense on second viewing. Well, maybe not a lot more sense. But with less effort required to decipher the chronology, multiple realities and freaky visuals, you can at least relax a bit and enjoy what, beneath the surreal flourishes, is really a deeply moving meditation on love and loss.

It's unfortunate that Michel Gondry's pic - his second collaboration with Kaufman after the little-seen Human Nature - came out amidst a tsunami of memory-erasure movies (Paycheck, 50 First Dates). It's not Charlie's fault: after all, he first pitched the idea in 1998. But the fact remains that the fulcrum on which his script pivots, - a private clinic that deletes painful pasts from its clients' crania, - simply isn't surprising anymore.

What is surprising is Kate Winslet's mercurial performance as Clementine, the orange-haired wild-child who breezes into Jim Carrey's life with all the momentum of Hurricane Frances. It's a fabulous, unexpected turn that leaves her co-star standing - although since he's playing Kaufman's morose stand-in, there's not much he can do about it. Jim spends most of the film trying to remove her from his memory. Just try erasing her from yours.

DVD Extras:

Gondry does most of the talking in his joint commentary with Kaufman, the energetic helmer happily acknowledging that the movie "could have turned out a piece of shit". In the Conversation With Jim & Michel featurette, however, it's the motormouth Carrey who doesn't shut up (more's the pity). A Look Inside... is standard Making Of fluff, while the Polyphonic Spree music vid is merely filler. More interesting though, are the four deleted and extended scenes that suggest some really cool stuff was left on the cutting-room floor.