A pleasant little bagatelle, but probably my least favourite of Jeunet's proper films (ie, those which he both directed and wrote or co-wrote the screenplay for, which excludes Alien: Resurrection); of those others, it's most like Amelie (a touchstone for me, of course) in the way that it pretty much gets by on whimsy alone, but it has neither the true feel-good factor of the other, nor its emotional heft. Still, its cast of eccentrics is enjoyable and the visuals are characteristically Jeunet (if somewhat more muted than the early genius of Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, both of which still haunt me) - but I can't help but watch it through the prism of the significance which each of his other films holds for me.
(w/ M)
