Something to watch tonight: La cité des enfants perdus aka The City of Lost Children

This week­end I reviewed three new release movies for RNZ’s Culture 101 show and they were all so unin­spir­ing that I chose one of most ima­gin­at­ive films of all time for our Saturday night Hollywood at Home watch.

The City of Lost Children, by Marc Caro (design dir­ect­or) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (mis-en-scene), was plucked from the excel­lent Sony Pictures Classics 30^th anniversary UHD box and it looked a treat.

On an aban­doned oil rig, a mon­ster named Krank and his hap­less companions/assistants attempt to steal the dreams of kid­napped chil­dren¹ while a cir­cus strong­man and some petty crim­in­al kids mount a come to the rescue.

That’s an imper­fect sum­mary of a film that seems to be inspired by everything and yet still be entirely its own. Vast water­logged indoor sets are sup­ple­men­ted by early digit­al effects – char­ac­ters rap­idly age­ing and fleas deliv­er­ing a mind con­trol ser­um work well, the green mist not so much – but its the play­ful cos­tumes by Jean-Paul Gaultier that really stand out. At one point, Ron Perlman’s red-haired hero uses the wool of his knit­ted sweat­er as a way to stay con­nec­ted to his young part­ner Miette (Judith Vittet) and it even unravels in an entirely Gaultier way.

Vittet was only nine years old but cine­ma­to­graph­er Darius Khondji shoots her superbly poised per­form­ance like she’s Hedy Lamarr.

One from the “they really don’t make them like that any­more” depart­ment, The City of Lost Children might be about kids and dreams but when the Cyclops cult turn up – eye­balls plucked and replaced by steam­punk video cam­er­as – it’s a hor­ror film, but when the screen is occu­pied by Dominique Piñón’s six hap­less clones it’s very much a comedy.

Where to watch La cité des enfants perdus / The City of Lost Childen

Aotearoa: Streaming on the Rialto Amazon chan­nel or digit­al rental

Australia: Digital rental

Canada: Streaming on Crave or Tele Quebec (free with ads)

Ireland: Digital rental

India: Digital rent­al from Prime Video

USA: Digital rental

UK: Streaming on the Studiocanal Amazon channel

Further listening

As well as Culture 101 for RNZ on Sunday, I also had my usu­al fun chat with Emile Donovan on Nights at 8.45 on Friday. To cel­eb­rate the achieve­ments of Artemis II, we played a sec­tion from Bill Conti’s Oscar-winning score from The Right Stuff and I reviewed The President’s Cake, Man on the Run and aler­ted listen­ers to the almost impossibly nos­tal­gic MTV Rewind website.

1. The tor­ment of not being able to dream reminded me of Bi Gan’s Resurrection which I reviewed here. ↩︎