Movies - The City of Lost Children

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	Movies - The City of Lost Children

La Cité des enfants perdus (or The City of Lost Children) is a French fantasy/comedy film by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet released in 1995. The film is stylistically related to the previous and subsequent Jeunet films, Delicatessen and Amélie.

The plot revolves around a mad scientist, Krank (Daniel Emilfork), who lives off the coast of a surreal Dickensian French city in an old oil rig and has been kidnapping children in order to study and extract their dreams, to supplement his own inability to dream, as a result of which he has become prematurely old.

In pursuit of this scheme, Krank employs a sinister cult of blind men called "Cyclops" to perform the kidnappings. In return for giving up their sight, the cult's adherents are given a mechanical "third eye" and a device which makes their hearing unnaturally sensitive. This augmentation is as much a curse as it is a boon; at one point the audience may witness the discomfort of one Cyclops listening to Denree chomp his food.

It is revealed that Krank is an artificially created man with superior intelligence. He was created by an inventor who also created five clones, a wife for Krank, and a migraine-ridden brain in a jar named Irvin for him to interact with. Irvin's voice is supplied by Jean-Louis Trintignant; the Inventor and Krank's clones are all played by Dominique Pinon.

The events of the film open with a sideshow strongman named One (Ron Perlman) witnessing an orphan he cares for, named Denree (Joseph Lucien), being kidnapped by Krank's Cyclops. It later turns out that Denree is a special child, one able to provide Krank with the ability to overcome his condition. One sets out to find and rescue his "little brother", with help of a nine-year-old street urchin girl named Miette (Judith Vittet).

Also in the film are a pair of Siamese twins known as "The Octopus". They train orphans (one of whom is Miette) to steal for them, in apparent homage to the character Fagin in Oliver Twist. Annoyed when Miette, their best thief, runs off with One, they seek to destroy them. To this end they attempt to secure help from their former sideshow employer, whose trained fleas can inject poison into a person's scalp, inducing the victim to commit acts of violence when the flea-master plays his barrel organ.

One and Miette eventually overcome these multiple obstacles, rescuing Denree and, in the process, destroying Krank's oil rig hideaway.

Trivia

To create the distinctive color scheme used in the movie, the actors were made up in white facepaint and the film's color was adjusted until they were flesh-toned.

Ron Perlman was the only American involved in this film. He does not speak French, but managed to learn all of his lines and deliver them by rote.

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 were unable to walk while wearing it. Consequently, the Octopus sisters do not walk in any shot depicting their entire body.

In his audio commentary with the director on the DVD, Ron Perlman commented that the scene where he is infected and forced to attack Miette (Judith Vittet
) was the most unpleasant thing he ever had to do in any of his films.

During filming, Ron Perlman was bitten by the dog with the pulley and Judith Vittet was bitten by the mouse with the magnet.

A video game based on this film was released in the US and in parts of Europe on the Sony Playstation video game console. This game is now difficult to obtain.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for The City of Lost Children ]

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