The City of Lost Children

Slow, languorous violins. A small boy is expectantly gazing at the open fire when a rope appears and a smiling Santa Claus climbs down. The smile vanishes rapidly from the boy's face when a second Santa Claus appears as well. The picture starts to sway backwards and forwards, just like waves. Soon the whole room is filled with smiling Santa Clauses, more reminiscent of twisted caricatures than anything else. The scene is shot through a wide-angle lens which gives the room, as well as the characters, a distorted and grotesque look. The little boy is crying desperately, the violin music becomes more and more dramatic and the room is more and more distorted. Suddenly you are thrown into another room, a piercing scream, a distorted face, more screams, more faces... It all culminates in an explosion of absurd suggestion; and then there is complete silence. The scene depicted is characteristic of the whole film. A visually distorted and continuously bizarre surrealism which reminds you of the earlier film Delica-tessen; by Caro and Jeunet again you find the same very special and morbid gallery of characters. With the help of an ingenious plot and spectacular imagery, to say the least, the audience is presented with a dark fairy-tale filled with bold special effects and references to other films. The film is set in a run-down, dark and derelict dockland area; surroundings that you associate with the world of Marcel Carné. This is where the Cyclops live; members of a Doomsday sect who see with the help of artificial eyes. The Cyclops kidnap children in order to swop them for newly made eyes from the power-crazed Dr. Krank, who in turn needs the children in order to steal their dreams. The strong and laconic One and the rationally gifted as well as pretty Miette try to kidnap the children back from the evil Krank. Naturally they succeed. The team Carot/Jeunet has, when it comes to the basic plot, obviously been inspired by Dicken's 19th century novel Oliver Twist. In a post-modern circus, where characters, ideas and caricatures are constantly being circulated, recycled and rephrased, the result has to be conspicuous. On the one hand you meet an absurd cinematic surrealism inspired by David Lynch and possibly Wes Craven, on the other hand a cinematic expressionism borrowed from Peter Greena-way and possibly Ken Russel. In many ways the film's aesthetics follow the themes. These are images from a society on the verge of a total breakdown. Humans are genetically cloned, the anonymity is absolute and the children, whose cynicism and spleen is astonishing, seem to have totally given up the thought of a future existence. The meaning of the film and its content lies exclusively in the attractive surface, in the visual and textual abundance. A cinematic spectacle and a seriously exceptional dream machine... RL

Premiärstatus
Nordisk premiär: Orig. titel
La cité des enfants perdus: Medverkande
Ron Perlman, Daniel Emilfork, Judith Vittet: Producent
Claudie Ossard: Manus
Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Marc Caro, Gilles Adrien: Foto
Darius Khondji: Musik
Angelo Badalamenti: Talat språk
French