#Jean-PIerre Jeunet

[classichorrorblog]

Alien: Resurrection (1997)

[dancyrilkingston]

LA CITÉ DES ENFANTS PERDUS (dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro, 1995)

[mask131]

Many people have talked about the Japanese influence of the Little Nightmares game - more precisely how the games offered themselves as a nightmarish and twisted Ghibli movie, what Miyazaki would have created for a Silent Hill game.

But I don't see many people talk about the French style and influence of the games...

Yes, I said French. It might surprise you, but one of the main sources for the aesthetic and tone of the games is a set of French works. The creators of Little Nightmares have been pretty clear in interviews that the movies of Jean-Pierre Jeunet were a big design and concept influence for the game. Now, Jean-Pierre Jeunet is most famous for his slightly absurd romance-comedy Amélie Poulain... But it was his two other most famous movies that inspired the Little Nightmares world.

On one side: Delicatessen

In a post-apocalyptic world, a building stands alone in the middle of the ruins of a city... A block of flats, each one hosting weird and excentric people: a tenant lives in water-filled rooms infested with snails and frogs, another keeps trying to kill herself with incredibly complex and extravagant suicide plans, others are dedicated creators of moo boxes... But all of them live under the domination and tyrany of the butcher whose shop is located at the base of the building: he is the one who provides the meat for all those who live above him, and thus has full authority over them, and nobody asks where it comes from...

One day, a new janitor arrives. A naive former circus clown, a gentle but farcical man who soon falls in love with the shy and secluded musician-daughter of the butcher. Unfortunately, it proves to be an actual fairytale as the janitor didn't just fell in love with a princess high up in her tower... but with the daughter of the ogre, for all the janitors before our protagonist mysteriously disappeared right with every new "meat supplies" delivery... The sweet and touching budding romance of these two youths in a no man's land soon turns into horror as the shadow of the butcher's cleaver falls upon them, and as the madness of the buildings' tenants keep increasing to absurd levels.

And what seems to be the couple's only hope? A secret network of sewer-dwelling, vegetarian terrorists that the butcher's daughter contacts in secret...

On the other side: La cité des enfants perdus

While Delicatessen was a dark comedy (or an humoristic horror, depending on which side you take it), The City of Lost Children is much harder to categorize as Jeunet (and Marc Caro, who also co-created Delicatessen) fully delve into the urban nightmare, the obscure poetry, the dark fairytale, the disturbing children story.

La Cité des Enfants perdus is the story of a mad scientist who lives in a derelict oil platform at sea, surrounded by various "failed" experiments (idiotic clones, a dwarf-wife, a brain in a jar). Unable to dream, he decides to capture the children of the nearest portuary town, in order to steal their dreams for himself - and he performs these crimes with the help of a strange cult of one eyed men referred to as the "cyclops".

One day, the scientist kidnaps the little brother of a simple-minded former circus strongman called "One". Determined to find him back, One teams up with miette (Crumb), a clever and cynical street-urchin girl ; however, their quest to find the secret of the Cyclops is made even more complicated by the presence of the Pieuvre (Octopus), cruel and greedy conjoined twins who are the boss of the children-thief network Miette belonged to, and hatch nefarious plans in light of the recent events...

In a way you could say that Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a sort of French Terry Gilliam. He has a very unique and distinctive style when it comes to his movies, something halway between a realistic Guillermo del Toro and a dirty Wes Anderson. His movies are still to this day a weir, but cult, part of French cinema.

And... Little Nightmares borrowed heavily from them. The large One and the little girl Crumb teaming up to save a child from a sea-dwelling villain becomes Six fighting for her life in the sea-faring Maw against the Lady. The butchering cannibalism of Delicatessen can be found back ; the water-infested flat of the elderly frog-raiser can evoke the Granny's quarters, while the strange suicide plans of the depressed tenant evoke the various "puzzles" of the game. The school run by the Octopus (stern school-teachers by day, vicious crime-lords at night) brings back to mind the school of Little Nightmares 2, and so forth and so on. Plus, of course, the strange technology: these two movies thrive on weird contraptions and strange buildings and never-ending pipes and other bizarre soul-sucking machinery, all elements that were very determinant in the visuals of the Little Nightmares universe.

If you ever wondered what a Little Nightmares movie would feel like... These movies could be of some help. Do yourself a marathon of Ghibli movies and Terry Gilliam ones intercut with Jeunet's pieces, and you could recreate yourself a strange Little Nightmares-flavored experience.

[ensalada-de-lengua-de-pajaritos]

Unmute the loop!

[cptrs]

[sesiondemadrugada]

Alien Resurrection (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997).

[cosmonautroger]

Audrey Tautou, Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001

[marejadilla]

“La valse d'Amélie”, Yann Tiersen. “Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain” (Bande originale du film), 2001.

[kiki-de-la-petite-flaque]

Audrey Tautou sur le tournage du film "Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain" de Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001

[o-link]

Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain

[movie-shots]

La cité des enfants perdus - Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Marc Caro (1995)

[pedroam-bang]

Alien: Resurrection (1997)

[davidhudson]

Happy 70th, Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[ensalada-de-lengua-de-pajaritos]

unmute the loop

[haveyouseenthisromcom]

Mod note: The film's original French title is Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain.