#Dominique Pinon

[ensalada-de-lengua-de-pajaritos]

unmute the loop

[pedroam-bang]

Alien: Resurrection (1997)

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

Ghost Dance (Ken McMullen, 1983)    

[genevieveetguy]

. Nobody is entirely evil: it's that circumstances that make them evil, or they don't know they are doing evil.

Delicatessen, Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (1991)

[mjlfilms]

The City of Lost Children (1995)

[sidepickleflicks]

Betty Blue (1986) dir. Jean-Jacques Beineix

[filmjunky-99]

d e l i c a t e s s e n, 1991 🎬 dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro

[cinematicmasterpiece]

delicatessen (1991)

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[letterboxd-loggd]

The Moon in the Gutter (La Lune dans le caniveau) (1983) Jean-Jacques Beineix

June 17th 2023,

[howardhawkshollywoodannex]

Mirielle Mosse, Dominique Pinon, and Daniel Emilfork in The City of Lost Children (1995). Mirielle is 3'11" and has nine acting credits from a 1988 French tv episode to Swimming Pool (2003).

[adamwatchesmovies]

The City of Lost Children (1995)

The City of Lost Children is a film with a distinct style of storytelling and equally unique visuals. It stands out among the rest. Although not every idea is fully developed, it's unforgettable.

Long ago, a scientist created Krank (Daniel Emilfork), an intelligent but evil man who cannot dream. Living on an abandoned oil rig with the long-gone scientist’s other creations, a dwarf named Martha (Mireille Mossé), six childish clones (Dominique Pinon) and a brain in a vat named Irvin (voiced by Jean-Louis Trintignant), Krank has strongarmed them into stealing children for him. From the children, he hopes to find a way to dream. After Krank’s minions kidnap Denree (Joseph Lucien), his older brother One (Ron Pearlman) teams up with a street urchin named Miette (Judith Vittet) to find the lost children.

The plot sounds awfully random but there's a logic woven through. It's just difficult to put into words. Part fairytale, part futuristic nightmare, The City of Lost Children is filled with characters so unique they pop off the screen. Miette is part of a gang of orphans working for the Octopus, a pair of conjoined twins (played by Geneviève Brunet and Odile Mallet) who share more than just a body. Their movements mimic, or complement each others’ in a way that suggests they share a mind too. The ones responsible for the kidnapping are members of the Cyclops Cult, whose followers ritually blind themselves and use cybernetic eyes to see. On their own, they’d stand out but in a tale where we frequently get to walk through children’s dreams and every character feels like it’s from a cross between Oliver Twist and Snow White with a side trip through Alice in Wonderland, you only question them once the end credits have finished and you’ve returned to the real world.

It’s hard to pick just one aspect of this surreal tale as “the best" but I’ve decided to settle upon the dreams we see Krank wander through. Through relatively simple special effects, The City of Lost Children gets the feel of them perfectly. The bizarre in-the-moment logic, the fleeting imagery, the simple but chilling turns that make you wake up unsettled from a nightmare are all there. So often, I see films try to show dreams and drop the ball. This French production (yes, you’ll need to turn on the subtitles) gets it right.

A few aspects of this picture by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet don’t quite work. The Cyclopses, for example, fit in this world but aren’t necessary and dropping them might’ve given us time to examine the key characters further. It’s also worth noting that a few special effects are dated (mostly close-up shots of CG insects). Aside from those criticisms, this is a bit of a demented masterpiece. I love how it interprets the theme of childhood innocence. The adults have either retained it, or seek it, while the kids have given up on it long ago. Some images shown are so vivid they cannot be forgotten once seen. This overshadows the difficulty you might have wrapping your mind around all the ideas the film presents.

After finishing The City of Lost Children, I immediately wanted to watch it again. It’s not that the story is life-altering, that the performances are that good, or that it all necessarily means something big. It’s that this work is so distinct one taste makes you crave more. The picture’s a tad overindulgent in the weirdness, but somehow, that also works in its favour. (Original French version on DVD, May 11, 2018)

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

Ghost Dance (Ken McMullen, 1983)    

[mjlfilms]

The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet

[ouibo-repris]

Marie-Laure Dougnac with Dominique Pinon - Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro