In the ’90s, the director of Amelie and the fourth Alien made a brilliant dystopian fantasy
Jean-Pierre Jeunet's steampunk cult classic The City Of Lost Children ditched noir's detectives but kept its world-weariness
Film Lists Amelie
Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our inscrutable whims. This week: With the Hugh Jackman vehicle Reminiscence headed for theaters and streaming, we’re thinking back on other sci-fi noirs.
The City Of Lost Children (1995)
Because the most high-profile success of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s career has shaken out to be 2001’s Amélie, many harbor a lingering perception of the French director as a merchant of cozy whimsy and quirky romance. But that movie is basically an anomaly in his filmography, having scored a fistful of Oscar nominations and a head-spinning $174 million windfall specifically for how it eschewed many of the signature, alienating elements of his style. The usual grimy textures, immersive dark-fantasy environments, and jerry-rigged contraptions out of Terry Gilliam’s hazier nightmares all went on a temporary hiatus in Amélie, and yet Jeunet’s devious authorial touch shone through in the odd suicide jumper tumbling out of the sky. Though engaging with the rom-com made his work more accessible, he still filtered its markers through a morbidly antic sensibility unmistakable as his own.
Set in a fetid soundstage muck-land peopled by steampunk cyclopes and bumbling clones, The City Of Lost Children takes place closer to Jeunet and co-director Marc Caro’s natural habitat, even as it assumes the same playful, idiosyncratic approach to an unfamiliar genre. Sci-fi is the default mode for a fanciful yarn about a mad scientist (Daniel Emilfork) kidnapping street urchins to steal their dreams since he can’t generate any of his own, using a ghastly extraction device typical of the film’s clanking analog machinery. (What better way to retrieve a key on the other side of a door than with a rat tied to a magnet?) Within that framework, however, there’s room for adventure and slapstick comedy and a mystery borrowing judiciously from noir tradition, with tropes and themes reworked through Jeunet’s bug-eye-goggled vantage. No plaintive sax solos, no voiceover narration, just the bone-deep world-weariness from a wayward soul traversing a senseless, confusing underbelly.
In the place of a gumshoe, we have the carrot-topped carnival strongman One (a laconic Ron Perlman), caught up in all this when his adopted little brother (Joseph Lucien) gets snatched for the fiendish experiment. One and his moppet sidekick (Judith Vittet) track the boy through a plot so labyrinthine that Roger Ebert openly professed not to have followed it—a Hammettesque jumble of heel turns and Dadaist reversals of fortune involving an amnesiac diver, a significant scalp tattoo, hyperintelligent fleas, and a sentient brain in a jar named Uncle Irvin. The kindly One may not be all that hard-boiled, but he ably fills the role of the principled patsy drawn into a conflict vaster than he realizes, landing himself between the conjoined-twinned bosses of a junior crime syndicate (the women jointly referred to as “The Octopus”) and the lunatic thinning their roster.
Some moments, as in the scene when the action pauses so One can get soused at a dingy bar, wear this spirit of homage on their sleeve. More frequently and subtly, Jeunet articulates his take on noir through melancholic emotional currents in line with the lamentation for wasted life that originally defined the genre. His films teem with lost and lonely figures, surrounded by death and willing to take absurd measures to assuage that dread by connecting to someone else. For all the attention paid to the handsome surfaces—Jeunet and Caro’s technical expertise, Darius Khondji’s transportive cinematography, Jean-Paul Gaultier’s shabby-chic costuming, Angelo Badalamenti’s moaning string arrangements—the power behind this aesthetic wonder comes from its mournful edge, belied by the resourceful mischief. Clattering doodads clutter the screen, but it’s how they can be abused for avaricious, cruel purposes that makes this a Jeunet film—a genre unto itself.
Availability: The City Of Lost Children is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. It’s also available to rent or purchase digitally.
54 Comments
I love this movie! I haven’t seen it in at least 14 years. I need to track down a physical copy. Did it ever make it to Blu-ray?
It was released on Blu-rayYou’ll have to check if it’s still in print or not.
This has been one of my favorite films for decades. Equal parts funny, charming, horrifying, and mesmerizing. Great performances all around. Especially for Perlman, who didn’t speak any French whatsoever when he took the part. But he learned his lines (simple though they were) and relied heavily on physical and facial expressions.
i always thought Dominique Pinon was a dead ringer for Daniel Craig.
Now that you say this I can’t unsee it.
Similar, but not really. Daniel Craig looks like Pinon if he was run through a handsomizer machine.
More like Brendan Gleeson mixed with Garrison Keillor
Aye that’s Handsome Pinon, he performs for nickels
Daniel Craig is the love child of Steve McQueen and Mr. Roper.
Somewhere at Eon Productions:“GET ME DANIEL CRAIG!”“He’s $50 million a Bond film.”“THEN GET ME HIS NON-UNION FRENCH EQUIVALENT!”
…god dammit.
woops
Terry Gilliam wants his wide-angle dystopian lens and overstuffed sets back.
This movie even had a computer game. I remember it did a good job of capturing the look and feel of the film, but the act of playing could be rage-inducing.
Yep, I watched the movie specifically because of the game (played it on ps1). Was the first subtitled movie I ever fully watched and appreciated and made me a Ron Perlman fan. Also the first time I ever watched a movie because of a game.
This game is better left remembered, not replayed! It was praised for its backgrounds, but it was just an awful point & click 3D game. And it took all 15 blocks of the PS1 memory card for some reason.
Delicatessen is what you wanna watch.
I came here to say exactly the same thing. “Delicatessen” is his masterpiece.
I once convinced my mother to watch Delicatessen by telling her it was a romantic comedy. Which isn’t exactly untrue.She will never let me live it down.
The Shape of Water goes, uh, a bit beyond homage to Delicatessen, while also being a significantly worse film.
Dark dystopian comedy at its most delicious!
Watching this back-to-back with Dark City was always fun.
But that movie is basically an anomaly in his filmography…Would you say it’s an an-Amélie????
… I’ll show myself out.
7/10
I love this joke!
I’ve never had the same issues with Alien: Resurrection that others did. Maybe I watched it young enough (certainly too young for an R-rated movie) that it all just seemed awesome. What I HAVE found interesting that it was unknowingly my first experience watching cinema through French direction and design. Over the last 5 or so years, I’ve consumed thousands of films from all over the world, and the distinct styles from varying countries is very exciting to me.I have since seen Jeunet’s City of Lost Children and Delicatessen and loved them both.Not science fiction, but I also distinctly remember enjoying Chris Nathan’s thriller Empire of Wolves with Jean Reno.
It was my first-ever Alien franchise movie, which I watched (in theaters!) only because Jeunet was attached. I thought it was completely fine, and didn’t understand the disdain.
There’s a lot of great stuff in it. Particularly Brad Dourif, J.E. Freeman, Dan Hedaya, and Michael Wincott chewing more scenery than the xenomorphs.But goddamn I cannot stand that fucking basketball scene. Felt like no one anywhere near the production had ever seen a basketball before. It’s awkward as fuck.
But goddamn I cannot stand that fucking basketball scene. Felt like no one anywhere near the production had ever seen a basketball before. It’s awkward as fuck.I’ll forgive it just because of the story behind Sigourney Weaver’s no-look swish as she walks away. There was no trickery there, she made that shot live (after about 20 tries), but it didn’t matter since the ball left the frame so it looked like it was probably faked. Still, you can see Weaver start to grin because she was just really happy she hit the shot.
And hey, it’s the distant future, maybe basketball is just played really oddly in, like, 700 years.
Heh heh, not a fan of the basketball scene, eh? It might interest you to know that the effects supervisor on the movie was this guy Pitoff, who did a fantastic job here but wound up directing a little movie called Catwoman, which also has a basketball scene:
You are not wrong, Alien: Resurrection IS awesome. Gory anti-human fun, Jenuet is mainly interested in the various ways he can turn people and aliens into piles of viscera, and Khondji is with him every step of the way. And this winds up working with the existential musings of Whedon’s script (which is also pretty gory), bodies are just yet-unexploded objects in space.But I’ve tried to watch Children twice and fallen asleep both times, and Amelie is terrible. Less whimsy and more chestbursters, Jenuet!
“…and Amelie is terrible.”
Clearly you have a vacancy in the left side of your chest. /jkAdmittedly, I have succumbed to the light, twee nature of the film and you definitely need to be on board with the eccentricities which are laid out for the viewer plainly within the first 5 minutes. While you personally may not have enjoyed it, I think that objectively speaking to call it “terrible” is doing it a disservice. Does that sound fair?
Reading this back before posting, I feel this is an accurate representation of how us Canadians argue on the internet.
Screw your Canadian politeness! In seriousness, I do think it is bad, a whimsical celebration of a sociopath, but I know that is a minority opinion and I don’t begrudge anyone who thinks otherwise.
It was the first Alien movie I was able to see in the theater and I enjoyed it, and still do. I kinda wish it got the revaluation people have given Alien 3. Nothing is ever going to top Alien and Aliens but 3 and 4 are both watchable fun. They are a lot better then either of the AvP movies or the Prometheus movies
Alien 3 is my second favorite in the franchise, but I would be loathe to describe it as “fun”
I also liked it a lot, mostly for that scene that was basically the Gondry’s “Sirens” ad for Levis, but with Aliens.
The problem with A:R is mostly that it’s about the worst mismatch between a great script and a great director that I’ve ever seen. The overall design of the film is great, and goes beyond merely aping Giger for once, but the lines end up falling flat either because Jeunet either doesn’t get the humor or simply doesn’t care. (It doesn’t help that Ryder’s character, despite being set up as the deuteragonist, doesn’t really have a lot to say or do. Whedon’s tendency to create good-looking young women characters with incredible powers but scant characterization is in full force here.)
Who is Ron Perlam?
I can’t remember how I stumbled across this when it first came out on VHS, but my local library system was also fantastic back in the mid-’90s. Pretty sure I watched it at least once a year through 2000. Made me a huge fan of Ron Perlman, still to this day. If it really is on Prime I’m hoping it’s the subtitled version and not dubbed like that imbedded trailer was, because the synching was so, so bad.
Things you did not mention that you should have:1) Ron Perlman in the trailer is named Ron ‘Perlam’ for some reason (0:55) a) he didn’t speak French at all so was perfect to play someone speaking it simply2) the movie is in French although the trailer is not (dubbed english)3) Jean-Pierre Jeunet made Delicatessen (in 1991 with Dominique Pinon) a) you never mentioned that b) the trailer suggested this was after with “From the producers of Delicatessen and Amelie” c) although this movie was between the two… d) but Alien: Resurrection (with Dominique Pinon!) was released before Amelie was..4) Delicatessen was the spiritual parent to The City of Lost Children and Amelie, and Amelie cannot be as appreciated until seen as the third film ( a prequel ) in this series of Amelie’s decendants (Julie Clapet, and later Miette)
Absolute masterpiece. A meditation on the theme of childhood terror. Steampunk before Steampunk was a thing. Amazing set pieces and real darkness.
I remember reading how they gave the film its distinctive palette – they put white powder on the faces of the actors, then changed the lighting etc. until the actors looked “flesh-coloured” again. This made the rest of the set look off, naturally.
Fun fact: This was the first one of them newfangled DVDs that I ever bought. Seeing that it was available in this new pristine format convinced me to finally buy a player. For like $300 in 1999 money.
Ron ‘Perlam’ (trailer) … not an encouraging sign …
Really, it’s Jeunet and Caro together that made the good stuff. At the time they were being touted as a French equivalent to the Coens.
True. This article forgets that’s a Jeunet & Caro film. Jean-Pierre Jeunet alone would have never done a film like this one. That’s the problem when one is more famous than the other, journalists completely dismiss the fact there’s another person who directed the film.
I’ve heard about this for years and never got around to watching it. Since it’s on Prime, seems like a good time.
a plot so labyrinthine that Roger Ebert openly professed not to have followed itFirst time I saw this was in France the summer it came out with no subtitles. I was a teenager. My French at the time was very good, but not quite to the point of fluency. Boy howdy was this movie fucking confusing. (I have since rewatched it with subtitles and was able to follow it, but let me just say that this is not the best movie to watch without subtitles if you’re trying to practice your listening French.)
I live in a world where the impact of Delicatessen and City of the Lost Children was way bigger than the one of Amelie. I mean, we talked about these all the time. All the nerd kids at school loved them so much. And City of the Lost Children broke me quite a lot, with nightmares and all.
is that a wide angle lens, is there anything more 90’s?!
I think there is an artistic reason why it’s confusing. It’s a noir film where the thief steals dreams. It’s about the power and the loss of them. Both literally and figuratively. It should hang together, but just by a thread, if it wants to keep the atmosphere of noir and dreams.
A buddy and I rented this and del Toro’s Cronos the same weekend and the moment he saw Perlman, he was begging to know how many languages the man spoke.