City of Lost Children, The

Another wacky and dark and visually dazzling film by the makers of "Delicatessen," "The City of Lost Children" is similarly set in an apocalyptic future - or, perhaps, just in the unique universe where French filmmakers Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro apparently lost their minds long ago.

If you saw "Delicatessen," a hilarious satire (about cannibalism, among other things) that was loaded with visual punch, you have some idea of what to expect.

If not . . . well, think of what it might look like if someone put "A Nightmare On Elm Street," "Brazil" and "Oliver Twist" in a blender.

"The City of Lost Children" is not an easy film to describe - and even the basic storyline will be misleading.

The lead characters are a little girl named Miette (Judith Vittet) and a circus strongman called One (Ron Perlman, still best known as Linda Hamilton's significant other in the TV series "Beauty and the Beast").

They spend most of the movie searching a dark, dank harbor town for a missing child, One's adopted younger brother. Like many other children in the area, he has mysteriously disappeared - spirited away to the ocean lair of Krank (Daniel Emilfork).

Unable to dream for himself, Krank puts the children into a machine that will transfer their dreams to him. Meanwhile, he is assisted by his dwarf wife (Mireille Mosse), six cloned adult children (all played remarkably and hilariously on-screen together by Dominique Pinon) and a disembodied brain named Irvin, which is kept alive in a fish tank.

Other characters central to the goings-on include "The Octopus," Siamese twin sisters who operate an orphanage, which is the perfect front for their ring of child-thieves; Marcello (Jean-Claude Dreyfus), a retired circus-owner, whose trained fleas also become characters in the story; and, ultimately, an amnesiac diver (also Dominique Pinon), whose presence late in thefilm answers some timely questions.

In some ways a sick-and-twisted take on "The Wizard of Oz," this is a unique film that is impossible to describe in conventional terms. But from the elaborate Rube Goldberg machinations to the wild-eyed set and costume designs to the array of inventive sight-gags, "The City of Lost Children" is a dazzling film.

There are places where it tends to drag and where the American audience may feel it gets a bit too dark (I don't want to know how they got so many different babies to cry on cue). And at nearly a full two hours, it's about 20 minutes too long.

But you're not going to find anything else like it out there, and if you like "different" films, this is about as different as they get.

"The City of Lost Children" is rated R for violence, some profanity and vulgarity, and a brief shot of scantily-clad women running from a strip joint.