Favorite Roles: Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Regulars

Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a director who most definitely has a cache of actors he enjoys casting again and again. He often has big, colorful casts, and it’s fun to see how his preferred actors might have a lead in one film, then pop up in a small role in another, then have a memorable supporting role in a third. A lot of variety in the types of characters they play, too – some tend to get cast according to type, but many of “his” actors get to use some range across his filmography. These are my favorite roles for some of my favorite reccurring players of his.

Urbain Cancelier:  Collignon (Amélie)

He’s awful, but he’s undeniably entertaining.  Collignon makes for a great antagonist browbeating poor Lucien, and Amélie’s secret war against him is a thing of beauty.  Both scenes of him reacting to her creative vengeance are comic gold.

Jean-Claude Dreyfus:  Marcello (The City of Lost Children)

Like a lot of things about The City of Lost Children, Marcello interests me in large part because of how much we don’t know about him.  I like that he’s less of an outright bad guy and more of a weak, somewhat demoralized guy who hasn’t yet worked up the nerve to do good.  That, and I love the whole circus/sideshow motif going on between him and the Octopus, so the “ringmaster fallen from grace” vibe is neat.

Ticky Holgado:  Germain Pire (A Very Long Engagement)

Ah, the peerless pry!  Cheerfully-tenacious but only-moderately-effective private investigator with a soft spot.  I enjoy this character a lot, and the brief montages of him chasing Tina Lombardi’s trail add some nice levity to the proceedings.

Serge Merlin:  Raymond Dufayel (Amélie)

This one’s a no-brainer.  Obsessive, crotchety, and literally unable to be touched by another human being, but Dufayel is just lovely.  I love his slow, tentative friendship with Amélie, how he’s just as nosy as she is and gets up in her business despite his protestations of indifference.    I like the (very) thinly-veiled discussions drawing parallels between Amélie and the girl with the glass, and the last scene with the videotape is wonderful.

Yolande Moreau:  Mama Chow (Micmacs)

True, Moreau has more to do and is probably more entertaining in Amélie, but I really like Mama Chow.  In the little family that the characters have cobbled together, she’s pretty much everyone’s mom, regardless of age or circumstance.  She’s equal parts maternal and practical, and I really like the scene where she convinces Bazil to fill the rest of them in on his plans and let them help him.

Ron Perlman:  One (The City of Lost Children)

It might be odd to count Perlman among Jeunet’s regulars, since he only made this film and Alien:  Resurrection, the less of which said the better, but One is so fantastic, he earns Perlman a slot here.  Easily-confused but brave, determined, and loyal to a fault, One rocks, and his adorable relationship with Miette is made of win.

Dominique Pinon:  The Clones (The City of Lost Children)

Honestly, I like all of Pinon’s appearances in Jeunet films, even Alien:  Resurrection, but I just love the clones so much.  While Pinon is no Tatiana Maslany, he’s not supposed to be.  The clones are largely interchangeable, childlike adults with the misfortune to have Krank for a brother.  I especially like the scene of one clone telling Krank about his dreams and another slips in seamlessly as the first one starts to nod off.

Rufus:  Robert Kube (Delicatessen)

Another tough one, because I love Rufus as Amélie’s dad, but ultimately, I had to go with Robert.  This part has it all:  novelty noisemaker production, late-night bouts of well-intentioned derring do, and unflattering insults from the voices in the head of his suicidal would-be lover.  Where else but in a Jeunet movie, people?

Audrey Tautou:  Amélie Poulain (Amélie)

All the best to Mathilde, but no way no how can you compete with Amélie.  I love her so much.  Her whimsy, her determination, her fear, her shyness, her stratagems – every bit of her is glorious.  Tautou plays this beautifully-written part to perfection, and I will love her forever for it; it’s just that kind of role.

The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (2013, PG)

I’ve been aware of this Jean-Pierre Jeunet film for quite a while, but it’s only recently that I’ve had an opportunity to see it.  While I wouldn’t put it on par with Jeunet’s French films, it’s still a rather lovely little curiosity that I enjoyed a lot (premise spoilers.)

10-year-old T.S. Spivet is a would-be Leonardo Da Vinci living on a farm in Montana.  A year ago, he took up the challenge of perpetual motion, and with his blueprints for an invention called the magnetic wheel, he’s achieved perhaps the closest mankind can currently come to such a machine.  When his invention earns him the prestigious Baird Award, T.S. leaves home and sets off on a cross-country trip to the Smithsonian (where, by the way, the unsuspecting academics don’t realize their big breakthrough was invented by a child,) riding the rails to collect his prize.

Like A Very Long Engagement, this film is based on a novel.  As such, it doesn’t always feel like a Jeunet film, although the director’s hand is very present in the whimsical production design and arresting cinematography (let loose in North America, Jeunet’s filmmaking offers up some stunning big-sky landscape porn.)  I’d say the story feels a bit more “directed” than Jeunet’s original pieces, which often revel in seemingly-haphazard events falling surprisingly into place at the last second.  This film is more straightforward, T.S.’s journey propelling us through the action and the family secrets in his past informing his character.

I really enjoy the character of T.S.  Although young Kyle Catlett doesn’t seem quite equal to the task of the brainy dialogue, he’s still a lot of fun, wonderfully eccentric and rootable.  I enjoy his machines, quirks, and analyses, and I like the ways in which he’s very clearly both a genius polymath and a 10-year-old boy.  I haven’t read the book the film is based, but I’m guessing that many of Jeunet’s idiosyncratic touches come through here; some of T.S.’s ruminations and obsessions seem very much up his alley.

My favorite part, though, is the story of T.S.’s unlikely parents.  Like T.S., I’m fascinated by what drew his entymologist mother and rancher father together (both played excellently by Helena Boham Carter and Battlestar Galactica’s Callum Keith Rennie.)  I love the section that features T.S. pondering this very question, giving us my favorite moment of the film:  T.S. noting how, despite the entirely different worlds they seem to inhabit, they brush hands as though they’re exchanging secret messages when they pass each other in the doorway.  Almost as interesting as their relationship with each other is the separate relationship each has with T.S.  His mother shares his scientific mind but doesn’t seem able to show him the warmth he needs as well.  Meanwhile, even though his father doesn’t express disapproval in him, T.S. can’t help but feel that he’ll never connect with his dad the way his rough ‘n’ tumble brother did (T.S. may be a genius, but it feels right that he only considers that he doesn’t measure up to his dad’s expectations, not that his salt-of-the-earth father might feel he doesn’t have enough to offer his brilliant son.)

Warnings

Thematic elements, some scary moments, and a lot of “don’t try this at home.”

The City of Lost Children (1995, R)

From a narrative standpoint, I’d say this is the most uneven of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s French films.  It isn’t as tightly-written, and some of the tangents are just plain odd.  However, I still love it.  It’s also probably the most ambitious and wildly-unique story of any of his movies, and while I’ve seen other films that fall under the same loose umbrella of dark surrealist urban fantasy, I’ve never seen anything quite like this.  And to me, that’s pretty much always the real stamp of a Jeunet film.

The nights are unsafe.  Children are being snatched by the Cyclops, a cult of blind men who “see” electronically with the aid of high-tech eye- and earpieces.  What no one knows, however, is that the children are given to Krank, a genetically-engineered mad scientist unable to dream.  He tries to harvest their dreams to put in his own head, but with Krank as their captive, the children have nothing but nightmares.  A childlike strongman street performer named One goes after the Cyclops when they kidnap his adopted little brother, and with the help of Miette, a clever young guttersnipe, his mission takes him to the very heart of Krank’s lair.

There’s a lot going on here.  At times, it feels like, “Circus performers and brains in a jar and clones, oh my!”, a hodgepodge of elements and motifs stitched together Frankenstein-style.  The result is bizarre and a little off-putting, but wonderful, too.  It tries to reach for more than any other Jeunet film, and while it sometimes falls short, it’s an undoubtedly wild ride that has some really neat things to offer.

Visually, of course it’s amazing.  From the battered brasswork look of Krank’s lab to the comic-horrible sight of One and Miette bound and gangplanked in preparation for their “swim with the fishes,” there’s a wondrous, very intentional detail to the design and composition of every shot.  The movie is also absolutely crazy about intricate chains of events where one circumstances follows another like dominoes.  These chains are always impressive to watch, with my personal favorite being the kids’ complicated plan to break into a particular building.

At the heart of the story is One and Miette, and Ron Perlman and Judith Vittet deliver superbly in their roles.  My guess is that Perlman’s French is far from fluent, but that works for One, who speaks in fragmentary sentences and struggles with abstract concepts.  He plays wonderfully against Vittet, whose Miette is tough, smart, and cynical.  In the face of One’s single-minded determination to recover his little brother, the girl finds her hard shell beginning to crack.  In addition to Dominique Pinon, who does a great job as all the clones (he’s no Tatiana Maslany, but he’s still a blast,) other Jeunet mainstays featured here include Ticky Holgado, Rufus, Jean-Claude Dreyfus, and Dominique Bettenfeld.

Warnings

Violence, disturbing images, brief sexual content, and drinking.