When you're born in the gutter you end up in the port.
-Miette

A long time ago, in a movie theater far far away, the only film I had seen from director Jean-Pierre Jeunet was <a href="http://letterboxd.com/mr_dulac/film/alien-resurrection/reviews/"Alien: Resurrection. It didn't exactly ignite a desire in me to pursue anything in his filmography. Although my opinion on the director was dramatically changed after seeing Amélie for obvious reasons, it took over 15 years for me to finally see what I believe is the film that got Jeunet the Alien sequel... for all the wrong reasons.

The City of Lost Children is a dark and disturbing fairytale. I could easily see why a Hollywood studio would drool over the thought of getting…

  The City of Lost Children is a wonderfully dark fairy-tale, spiced up by the visual flair of Jeunet and Caro.

There is something inescapably alluring about a dark tale that is about children but perhaps isn’t suitable for them. Stories like this often reside in between dark fantasy and light-hearted morality tale and this one is no exception. The conceit is rather classic, evil man tries to steal dreams from children. It is therefore not so much the content of the film that makes it so enjoyable, but most definitely the approach the pair of directors take to present it. It is visually as rich as it is grim.

Like their previous collaboration Delicatessen this film has a lovely fluidity…

If Tim Burton had a nightmare after watching 2001: A Space Odyssey, it would probably have turned out something like The City of Lost Children. Set in a twisted, cyberpunk, surrealist alternate post-apocalyptic reality, The City of Lost Children features more imagination per square inch then the average year's worth of films combined. The story follows One, a circus strongman who goes on a quest to save his little brother from the clutches of a mad scientist trying to steal the dreams of children. Along the way he joins forces with a tough young orphan named Miette, and meets a host of odd and colorful characters.

I could fill up a small novel just listing off some of the strange…

The City of Lost Children's surrealism is both charming and disturbing. A steampunk fairytale from directors Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, the film is a plethora of peculiar characters and settings. On an oil rig in the middle of an ocean reside an assortment of failed "experiments" belonging to a missing genius. These include a diminutive woman named Miss Bismuth, a brain in a tank nicknamed Uncle Irvin, six clones (played by the brilliant Dominique Pinon), an assemblage of cyclopses with acute hearing, and finally the humanoid Krank, whose despair at not being able to dream is the catalyst for much of the action.

Add to this the former Russian sailor One (whose little brother is kidnapped by Krank), and…