TV & Film Profile

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

French Film Fabulist By Eric Schneider

Consistently drawn towards the fantastical, the French writer/director is a true auteur.

One of very few contemporary French filmmakers consistently drawn towards the fantastical, writer/director Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a true auteur, renowned for his visual verve and quirky characters. Co-helmed by Marc Caro, Jeunet's first two movies, Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, showcased the darker side of his aesthetic with pitch-black comedy and oppressive industrial sets. For 1997's Alien Resurrection, Jeunet heeded the siren call of Hollywood and essentially shoehorned his moody Lost Children approach into the sci-fi thriller's established mythos, with odd, if intriguing, results. Returning to Paris, Jeunet lovingly developed Amélie, a much more personal and lighthearted film about a young waitress and her bright flights of fancy. The whimsical modern fairy tale garnered Jeunet his best marks yet, made a movie star out of Audrey Tatou, and inspired a wave of garden-gnome photography to boot. Although Jeunet only resurfaces from the depths of his imagination every four or five years, his productions are always thoroughly engaging, utterly unique, and well worth the wait.

TAGS: Adventure, Auteur, Black Comedy, Comedy, Fantasy, French, Playful, Romance, Tribeca Film Festival 2010,

FACTS: Born/Formed: September 03, 1953; Location: Roanne, Loire, France

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