Jean-Pierre Jeunet succeeds in creating a twisted fairy tale. In contrast to what happens in more lightweight movies, their attempts do not always succeed. Like most elements of the film, though, the plot succeeds by taking a familiar, timeless theme and placing it in a disconcerting setting. Caro and Jeunet have a sensibility steeped in underground comics, and the world they've created seems ripped off from a perversely detailed comic book and brought to life with a strange magic.
Water is everywhere.
Houses appear to float just inches from the briny deep, and every adult's face is filmed with mild to extreme perspiration. The actors look more like they came from the pages of Raw than from a casting book. The dream sequences sprinkled throughout the film, which offer some of the only clues to what's going on in the speechless, lost children's minds, show how the slightest accentuation of the normal can shift our feelings from calm to queasy. Most of these dreams take place in an idealized, timeless Christmas setting. One in particular features a child sitting wide-eyed, admiring the decorations and the innocent face of a young nutcracker soldier.