classicsoncall Review of The City of Lost Children

The City of Lost Children (1995)

"All the penguins, the centipedes, everyone applauds."

[6/10 · 18 June 2018]

Having previously viewed a film by directors Jeunet and Caro titled "Delicatessen", I thought I was prepared to see another one of their works. Similar to that movie, the story has a distinctively dystopian feel to it with strangely realized characters, and unless one pays attention, some of the visual weirdness may overwhelm one's focus on the story. It involves a rather mad scientist attempting to steal the dreams of young children, kidnapped and brought to his laboratory for that purpose, though their cooperation is negated when they only dream nightmares. Although I didn't have too much trouble following the story, it just felt confusing with all the surrealistic imagery the film had to offer. One of the kidnapped kids was the little brother of Ron Perlman's character, a mentally challenged circus strongman billed as Crusher Bones, though he and others referred to himself as 'One'. I'd point out some of the other strange characters in the film but to be quite honest, they were all strange and not very likeable, except for possibly the young girl named Miette (Judith Vittet) who turned out to be the nominal hero of the story with One's help. As for the deranged scientist Krank (Daniel Emilfork), someone got it correct when they described him by saying "This man's a proper nutcase".