Cité des enfants perdus, La (DVD)

Traditionally French cinema has beautiful cinematography to go with the beautiful lyrical language. Filmakers Jeunet and Caro however, who also made Delicatessen, deliberately turn tradition on its head, and use dark, dingy lighting and sets mixed with foul characters and a jittery stuttering script. The pair delight in disgusting and surprising the audience, yet also manage to create a charming and touching movie. The filmakers believe that if one cannot dream and use your imagination, you are 'sentanced to the everyday, to reality.' This idea results in the main story of the film, Krank, a tormented man who cannot dream, steals young children in ...  Read the complete review

'OH NO!' I hear them cry '...not a foreign film!' To tell the truth, I can be as unsophisticated as the next man, but I recommend you put your Xenophobia aside and catch this movie (you can probably buy it quite cheap in the sales) Set in a sort of wierd '1920s yet futuristic' city, the City of Lost Children (see, I even translated it for you!) is full of obscure French humour. Burping kids, evil conjoined twins and mad scientists are mixed with childhood innocence and wicked humour to create a very funny film about kidnapping, cloning and clownery. Even if you can't understand the French (a bit fast and colloquial ...  Read the complete review

I really loved this film. It was made by Jeunet & Caro the same people who made "Delicatessen", a post nuclear war fable. Its set in a fantastical, mythical, 1920s, noirish french city. In this city lice can be coerced into becoming assasins, a pair of siamese twins still joined together terrify and control a gang of young thieves, and a cult abducts children to sell to a man who cannot dream. But, these are only a fraction of the characters who inhabit this film. It tends to center around a simple strongman whose young adopted(?) brother is abducted by the cult. He then sets out to rescue him. I'm not sure whether to reveal any more of ...  Read the complete review