Taglines: Where happily ever after is just a dream.
The City of Lost Children movie storyline. Krank (Daniel Emilfork), a highly intelligent but evil being created by a vanished scientist, is unable to dream, which causes him to age prematurely. At his lair on an abandoned oil-rig (which he shares with the scientist’s other creations: six childish clones, a dwarf named Martha, and a brain in a vat named Irvin), he uses a dream-extracting machine to steal dreams from children.
The children are kidnapped for him from a nearby port city by a cyborg cult called the Cyclops, who in exchange he supplies with mechanical eyes and ears. Among the kidnapped is Denree (Joseph Lucien), the adopted little brother of carnival strongman One (Ron Perlman).
After the carnival manager is stabbed by a mugger, One is hired by a criminal gang of orphans (run by a pair of Siamese twins called “the Octopus”) to help them steal a safe. The theft is successful, but the safe is lost in the harbor when One is distracted by seeing Denree’s kidnappers. He, together with one of the orphans, a little girl called Miette, follows the Cyclops and infiltrates their headquarters, but they are captured.
Meanwhile the Octopus orders circus performer Marcello (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) to return One to them. He uses his trained fleas, which secrete a poison that causes mindless aggression, to turn the Cyclops guards against each other, before rescuing One. However he leaves Miette behind, who almost drowns before a amnesiac diver living beneath the harbor retrieves her.
Miette leaves the diver’s lair to find One and Marcello both drowning their sorrows in a bar. Upon seeing Miette alive the remorseful Marcello lets One leave with her. However the Octopus confronts them on the pier, and uses Marcello’s stolen fleas to turn One against Miette. A spectacular chain of events triggered by one of Miette’s tears leads to a ship crashing into the pier before One can throttle her. Marcello arrives and sets the fleas on the Octopus, allowing One and Miette to escape to continue searching for Denree.
Back at Krank’s oil-rig, Irvin gets one of the clones to release a plea for help in the form of a bottled dream telling the story of how they were created. It reaches One, Miette, and the diver, and the latter remembers that he was the scientist who made them, and that the oil-rig was his laboratory before Krank and Martha pushed him off to take it for themselves. They all converge on the rig; the diver to destroy it and the duo to rescue Denree.
The City of Lost Children (French: La Cité des Enfants Perdus) is a 1995 science fantasy drama film directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, written by Jeunet and Gilles Adrien, and starring Ron Perlman. An international co-production of companies from France, Germany, and Spain, the film is stylistically related to the previous and subsequent Jeunet films, Delicatessen and Amélie.
The City of Lost Children (1995)
Directed by: Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Starring: Ron Perlman, Daniel Emilfork, Judith Vittet, Dominique Pinon, Geneviève Brunet, Odile Mallet, Mireille Mossé, Serge Merlin, Jean-Louis Trintignant
Screenplay by: Gilles Adrien, Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Production Design by: Marc Caro, Jean Rabasse
Cinematography by: Eric Caro, Philippe LeSourd, Darius Khondji
Film Editing by: Ailo August, Hervé Schneid
Costume Design by: Jean-Paul Gaultier
Set Decoration by: Aline Bonetto, Georges Mougine, Denis Ozenne, Marie-Laure Valla
Art Direction by: Jean Rabasse
Music by: Angelo Badalamenti
MPAA Rating: R for disturbing and grotesque images of violence and menace.
Distributed by: Union Générale Cinématographique (France)
Release Date: May 17, 1995 (France)
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