French Fancy

Well I did have several things to talk about today; most of them are actually film related. Which is strange because I don’t normally enjoy watching films; but I’ve seen two recently which I have very much enjoyed and one of them I went to see of my own free will.
The first was something my class watched as part of our Wednesday afternoon activities was a French film which after forgetting the title didn’t take me long to found out again. Typing ‘French films’ into Wikipedia pulled up a least so short I was able to read through many of them before I found the correct one. ‘The city of lost children’ was its translated name but I did watch the entire film with subtitles but I think I prefer it that way. I find that with subtitles it forces you to pay more attention to what you’re watching because otherwise you will miss the plot. Not that the plot presented itself much in this film, oh no. It was one of those films where you have absolutely no clue as to what is going on until near enough the end, which was a new experience for me as I have a habit of finding out the plot of a film before I watch it, and then in the end seeing no point in watching it since I already know what has happened.
The opening scene was one of Christmas, decorations and presents. A small child eagerly waiting in their beds as Father Christmas descends the chimney. Followed by another, and another; until the room is filled with men clad in red and white, by this point I did mutter “why can’t we watch a normal film?” But as more characters were introduced I found myself getting enthralled with the film, the group of children part of the ‘Thieves Guild’ says Wikipedia (must be true then) reminded me of ‘Oliver Twist’ to some extent with their ringleader ‘Miette’ likeable to ‘Dodger’.
I found Miette a very likeable character because even though she’s only about 12 she was very world weary, cynical even. But still cunning and brave enough for the plot, she isn’t the stereotypical “save me” damsel in distress and even when drowning her head is held high.
Even the antagonist ‘Krank’ seemed like the human life-like version to Mr. Burns I still couldn’t find him totally evil, more like comedic evil.
I thought that ‘the Octopus’, the twin ladies who were so in sync that while one took a drag on a cigarette the other exhaled the smoke was quite comical and even though they tried to murder the main characters many times I still found myself to be fond of them.
Overall I preferred this film a lot to ‘Dark City’, sort of strange because the setting was similar in that everything happened at night, and the people known as ‘Cyclops’ were a bit like ‘the Strangers’. But I found the main characters in this much more likeable than ‘Dark City’ and I think because of the presence of children made things less malevolent.
I think that, one of the reasons I liked this film is that I like comedies; and that because the film is old, its serious areas which were once viewed as that come across in a comedic sense now; much like ‘Night of the Hunter’.
Now I realise I said I wanted to talk about another film, and I shall; in another post. There is a lot floating around in my head and I need some time to get it down before it floats off.