La cité des enfants perdus (1995)

Directors:

Marc Caro
Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Writers:

Gilles Adrien (writer) &
Jean-Pierre Jeunet (writer) ...

Release Date:

15 December 1995 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | Fantasy | Horror | Sci-Fi

Tagline:

Where happily ever after is just a dream.

Plot:

A scientist in a surrealist society kidnaps children to steal their dreams, hoping that they slow his aging process.

Plot Keywords:

Dream | Children | Aging | Nightmare | Orphan

Awards:

2 wins & 10 nominations

Cast

Ron Perlman	...	One
Daniel Emilfork	...	Krank
Judith Vittet	...	Miette
Dominique Pinon	...	le scaphandrier / les clones
Jean-Claude Dreyfus	...	Marcello
Geneviève Brunet	...	la Pieuvre
Odile Mallet	...	la Pieuvre
Mireille Mossé	...	Mademoiselle Bismuth
Serge Merlin	...	Gabriel Marie (Cyclops Leader)
Rufus	...	Peeler
Ticky Holgado	...	Ex-acrobat
Joseph Lucien	...	Denree
Mapi Galán	...	Lune
Briac Barthélémy	...	Bottle
Pierre-Quentin Faesch	...	Pipo

Also Known As:

The City of Lost Children (UK) (USA)
Die Stadt der verlorenen Kinder (Germany)
La ciudad de los niños perdidos (Spain)
La ciutat dels nens perduts (Spain: Catalan title) (TV title)
Город потерянных детей (Russia) [ru]
A Cidade das Crianças Perdidas (Portugal) [pt]
De förlorade barnens stad (Sweden) [sv]
De fortabte børns by (Denmark) [da]
Elveszett gyermekek városa (Hungary) [hu]
Grad izgubljene dece (Serbia) [sr]
I poli ton hamenon paidion (Greece) [el]
Kadonneiden lasten kaupunki (Finland) [fi]
Kayip çocuklar sehri (Turkey: Turkish title) [tr]
La città dei bambini perduti (Italy) [it]
La città perduta (Italy) (video title) [it]
Ladrão de Sonhos (Brazil) [pt]
Mesto izgubljenih otrok (Slovenia) [sl]
Miasto zaginionych dzieci (Poland) [pl]

MPAA:

Rated R for disturbing and grotesque images of violence and menace.

Runtime:

112 min

Country:

France | Germany | Spain

Language:

French | Cantonese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Australia:M | Iceland:16 | Canada:14 (Nova Scotia) | Canada:AA (Ontario) | Canada:PA (Manitoba) | Canada:PG (British Columbia) | South Korea:15 | Finland:K-16 | Germany:12 | Portugal:M/12 | Singapore:NC-16 | Spain:13 | Sweden:15 | UK:15 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Studios 91 Arpajon, Saint-Germain-les-Arpajon, Essonne, France

Company:

Club d'Investissement Média

Trivia:

The Octopus are conjoined twins joined at the leg, but the actresses who played them are not. A prosthetic third leg was designed and fitted to the actresses, but they could not walk while wearing it. This is why the Octopus sisters do not walk in any shot of their whole body.

Goofs:

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): The words from The Original that Miette remembers in flashback (after she receives Uncle Irvin's dream message) differ slightly from what The Original actually said, although the point of the message is still the same.

Quotes:

Clone: C'est moi l'original! C'est moi!

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Starz Inside: Fashion in Film (2008) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Serenade Gouden Hart

M. Perlman parle francais aussi!

"City of Lost Children" is a beautifully-realized if derivative dark fantasy in which a mad scientist named Krank, aided by a half-dozen clones, a midget woman, and a brain in a tank, abducts children to his offshore lab so he can steal their dreams. Seems he's unable to have any of his own. A sideshow strongman, played by a radiantly fit Ron Perlman, goes in search of his little brother, who has been taken by Krank's goons. Perlman, in another of his growing gallery of bizarre roles, is a perfect example of why I like character actors better than big-name stars. And how many languages does he speak, anyway? French here, Spanish (and English, of course) in "Cronos"; polyglot in "The Name of the Rose"; what next?

The strongman, named One, enlists the aid of Miette, a homeless, streetwise girl who, along with her fellow urchins, is part of a ring of thieves employed by a pair of sinister female Siamese twins named the Octopus. (Watch carefully how these evil twins smoke a cigarette. There are more weird characters per square inch in this flick than anywhere else outside a Heironymus Bosch painting.) Miette is played by Judith Villet, whose gonna-be-a-great-beauty looks, her air of intelligence and experience beyond her years, make her a sort of Gallic Natalie Portman.

Anyway, that's the plot: rescue little brother from the mad doctor. The images are the thing: with its rendering of a bleak, low-tech retro-future, "City" looks more like a Terry Gilliam movie than "Twelve Monkeys" does! And it slyly slips in ideas and images from other sources, to good effect: Krank himself is as much of the mad-doctor stereotype as is the character in "The Nightmare Before Christmas"; his outlandish electro-headgear is similar to that used in Disney's "Merlin Jones"; a nightmare on the loose swoops low along the ground through streets and alleys as a trail of green mist, improving on a similar image from "Bram Stoker's Dracula"; there's a confrontation in dreamland a la the "Elm Street" series; and while the idea of a brain in a tank isn't a new one, this is the first benign one I've ever seen. Familiar or not--and I'm thinking also of "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T"--"City of Lost Children" is still engaging, enjoyably weird, fantastic and funny, helped greatly by the fact that One and Miette are so endearing. The pace is a tad slower than it might have been. But this is, after all, a French movie.