JEAN-PIERRE JEUNET FILMOGRAPHY - Making Films Look Like Paintings

Jean-Pierre Jeunet is an amazingly witty French director that makes artsy movies unlike anybody else. This video looks back at his career throughout the years.

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The thing that’s so amazing about his work is that he has an enormous ability to mix elements of fantasy, realism and science fiction either to create idealized realities or to give relevance to mundane situations. A former animator, his movies are marked by quirky, slapstick humor, alongside surrealist visuals.

And being such a creative person it’s no wonder that he has come to be regarded as one of the most influential and important directors in modern French cinema, even earning him two Academy Award nominations.
In this video I’m going to explore his directed movies and look back at Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s humble begins until his most current project. So,
who is Jean-Pierre Jeunet?

Jean-Pierre Jeunet was born on September 3rd, 1953 in Coteau, France. Prior to his career in cinema he worked as a technician at France Telecom in Nancy. He started his career in directing by making advertisements and music videos, including La Fille aux bas nylon by Julien Clerc which was released in 1984 or Tombé pour la France by Étienne Daho released in 1986.

At the same time he was also working with Marc Caro, a designer and comic book artist who became his longtime collaborator and co-director. They met at an animation festival in Annecy in the 1970s.

Together, Jeunet and Caro directed award-winning animations. Their first live action film was Le bunker de la dernière rafale or in English “The Bunker of the Last Gunshots” released in 1981. All Caro’s and Jeunet’s short films won awards at numerous festivals, both in France and abroad. One of the more known music videos that Jeunet directed together with Caro is Jean Michel Jarre's, "Zoolook".

The movie that really propulsed Jeunet and Caro into the media spotlight was actually the movie “Delicatessen” which was released in 1991. This movie was well received at the box office, and was nominated for several important European awards.

As mentioned “Delicatessen” made Jeunet and Caro popular in French cinema but they had to wait till 1995 until they were able to release their next feature film La Cité des enfants perdus or in English The City of Lost Children which is a dark, multi-layered fantasy film which proceeds to tell a story in full awareness that the past to which it is committed never really existed making this movie a perfect example of the steampunk genre.

The success of The City of Lost Children with its interesting visual style led Jeunet to an invitation to direct the fourth film in the Alien series, Alien Resurrection which was released in 1997. Jeunet had just completed the script to Amélie and was surprised he was offered the job for Alien Resurrection, as he thought the franchise had finished with Alien 3 and believed that making a sequel was a bad idea. The film grossed $47.8 million in North America, which made it the least successful of the Alien series on that continent. However it was well received internationally, hwith a gross of $113.6 million, bringing its total gross to $161.4 million worldwide.

In 2001 Jean-Pierre Jeunet released undoubtedly my favorite project of his “Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain” known in English speaking countries as “Amelie”. The film is a whimsical depiction of contemporary Parisian life, set in Montmartre. Amélie was a huge critical and commercial success worldwide and was nominated for several Academy Awards. For his work on the film, Jeunet won a European Film Award for Best Director.

In 2004 Jeunet released “Un long dimanche de fiançailles” or in English “A Very Long Engagement” which was filmed entirely in France over an 18-month period, with about 30 French actors, approximately 500 French technicians and more than 2,000 French extras.

In 2009 he released Micmacs which is called MicMacs à tire-larigot in French meaning MicMacs Non-stop shenanigans. This film is billed as a "satire on the world arms trade. Though the film contains no obvious special effects sequences, digital color manipulation is used throughout, and specific digital manipulations were used on about 350 shots. These manipulations often involved removing people and objects in backgrounds of scenes shot on Paris streets.

In 2013, Jeunet released The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet, a Franco-Canadian movie, which is an adaptation of Reif Larsen's book The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet. At the 39th César Awards, the film won the award for Best Cinematography.

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