Tuesday 29 March 2011

The City Of Lost Children (1995)

Where happily ever after is just a dream.

Like an unrestrained French Terry Gilliam. Very unusual and original in almost all aspects: characters, story, production design. Outlandish and bizarre characters framed in hallucinatory closeups. Fantastical often industrialised settings. Interesting tropes from science fiction: clones, living brains, trained fleas with tiny artificial proboscises injecting victims with killer serums.

The two leads, Perlman's strongman and the girl, Judith Vittet, are very compelling. Ron Perlman of course great in Hellboy (2004). Vittet like a young Audrey Tatou. Even Perlman and the girl's relationship a bit iffy, a future legitimate romance, or if now, with paedophilic overtones?

Until we found out how to switch the DVD to French audio with English subtitles, we watched in the default audio setting of dubbed English which definitely spoilt the first half of the movie.

Posted using Blogo from my MacBook Pro

Amendments: added year of release to the film "Hellboy". Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.



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