Dreamy World Of Dream-Stealer Has Technical Marvels Aplenty

Movie review

XXX "The City of Lost Children," with Ron Perlman, Daniel Emilfork, Judith Vittet, Dominique Pinon. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, from a screenplay by Gilles Adrien, Jeunet and Caro. In French, with English subtitles. Egyptian. "R" - Restricted, due to violence.

On visual terms alone, "The City of Lost Children" is something of a masterpiece, using state-of-the-art physical, optical and digital special effects to stretch cinematic boundaries.

This feast of fancy springs from the fertile imaginations of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, the directing team who made their feature debut with 1991's "Delicatessen," a comedy about cannibalism that blossomed on a similar canvas of fantastical invention. In the spirit of pioneering movie magician Georges Melies, Jeunet and Caro are illusionists par excellence.

It is almost tragic, then, that they are also Tin Men of the mind, soaring on wings of technology but lacking the heart to tell great and memorable stories. There are delights aplenty in "The City of Lost Children," but it is a movie cobbled together by gadgeteers who are more interested in cinematic Rube Goldberg devices than they are in eliciting genuine emotional response.

For some people, this won't matter a bit. But even those who would prefer a more involving narrative won't be bored.

The story, such as it is, takes place in a dark, storybook land that is neither past, present nor future. There's a harbor town, vaguely French post-industrial but otherworldly as well. The children there must proceed with caution, for they are the potential victims of the nefarious Krank (Daniel Emilfork), a wicked scientist who is aging prematurely because he has lost the ability to dream.

From an offshore rig, Krank commands an army of Cyclops - men who have replaced one eye with computerized video-scopes - who kidnap the town's children so Krank can steal their dreams. Attending to this scheme are Krank's assistants, the midget Miss Bismuth (Mireille Mosse), six identical clones (all played, via superb digital composites, by "Delicatessen's" funny-faced hero, Dominique Pinon), and a disembodied brain named Irvin (voice by Jean-Louis Trintignant).

Krank's latest abductee is Denree (Joseph Lucien), a precocious toddler whose adopted brother, a sideshow strongman named One (Ron Perlman, from TV's "Beauty and the Beast"), vows to rescue the boy from Krank's clutches. He is assisted by a spunky orphan named Miette (Judith Vittet), but there's plenty of trouble in store in the form of a wickedly trained flea, a deep-sea diver with family ties to Krank's clones, and Siamese twin sisters who recruit orphans to steal for their black-market schemes.

If you accept it as a dream in which a coherent plot is utterly beside the point, "The City of Lost Children" will dazzle you with its parade of grotesqueries. It's a movie in which freakish actors are just another element of the elaborate design, playing characters who are no more or less important than the awesome sets, costumes and cinematography.

Jeunet and Caro have drawn comparisons to Terry Gilliam (a vocal supporter of their work), but Gilliam's visions have - especially in the case of "12 Monkeys" - the narrative discipline that "The City of Lost Children" lacks. Until Jeunet and Caro find a more compelling structure for their imaginations, their films will remain mechanically enthralling but dramatically detached.