If there were a “Senior superlative” category for Film Most Influenced by Brazil, it would probably be The City of Lost Children (1995), a chaotic steampunk fantasia from France. It’s the second directorial collaboration between Marc Caro and eclectic, inventive director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and while it doesn’t possess the clockwork structural finesse of Terry Gilliam’s masterwork, it has a similarly infectious visual splendor full of cockeyed camera angles and cinematic sight gags.
Like Brazil, The City of Lost Children is set in a timeless otherwhen: a soggy, bleak cityscape which feels both Dickensian and grungily futuristic. A mad scientist named Krank (Daniel Emilfork), who lives on an offshore oil platform, lacks the ability to dream, so he sets about kidnapping children from the mainland to harness their imaginations with scientific experiments. Krank’s evil plans, facilitated by roving packs of Borg-like skinheads known as Cyclops, intersect with the fate of One (Ron Perlman), whose adopted brother Denrée (Joseph Lucien) is abducted. One, burly and true blue, sets out to track his charge down — a mission that throws him into the path of a band of street-orphan pickpockets — one of which, Miette (Judith Vittet), takes a shine to him. Together, they explore the dingy dangers of the city in an attempt to save Denrée from Krank’s evil clutches.
While the nuances of the plot may be difficult to suss at times — a lost-in-translation issue, perhaps — The City of Lost Children is nonetheless a delightful experience, a feast of visual creativity that imbues its nineteenth-century look with various science-fictional conceits and contraptions, making for an imaginary “out-of-time” aesthetic. For Jeunet, who would go on to make Amelie, it serves as a fertile testing ground for his signature tone: twee, charming romance with a hint of child-like playfulness, even as the dire situation contains gritty elements and adult themes. Nitpickers might call some of its more Gilliamesque flourishes obviously imitative, and again, the scrambled narrative requires a bit of parsing. But beyond that, I’m hard-pressed to find anything to complain about; I remember enjoying quite a bit when it came out, and for me it definitely stands the test of time.
