Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Jeunet at Deauville, 2009
Born (1953-09-03) 3 September 1953
Roanne, Loire, France
Occupation Film director, screenwriter, film producer
Years active 1978–present

Jean-Pierre Jeunet (French: [ʒɑ̃ pjɛʁ ʒœnɛ]; born 3 September 1953) is a French film director and screenwriter known for the films Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children, Alien: Resurrection and Amélie.

Life and career

Jean-Pierre Jeunet was born in Roanne, Loire, France. He bought his first camera at the age of 17 and made short films while studying animation at Cinémation Studios. He befriended 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.[1]

Together, Jeunet and Caro directed award-winning animations. Their first live action film was The Bunker of the Last Gunshots (1981), a short film about soldiers in a bleak futuristic world. Jeunet also directed numerous advertisements and music videos, such as Jean Michel Jarre's Zoolook (together with Caro).

Jeunet's films often resonate with the late twentieth century French film movement, cinéma du look, and allude to themes and aesthetics involving German expressionism, French poetic realism, and the French New Wave.[1]

Jeunet and Caro's first feature film was Delicatessen (1991), a melancholy comedy set in a famine-plagued post-apocalyptic world, in which an apartment building above a delicatessen is ruled by a butcher who kills people in order to feed his tenants.[2]

They next made The City of Lost Children (1995), a dark, multi-layered fantasy film about a mad scientist who steals children's dreams so that he can live indefinitely.[3] The success of The City of Lost Children led to an invitation to direct the fourth film in the Alien series, Alien: Resurrection (1997).[4] This is where Jeunet and Caro ended up going their separate ways as Jeunet believed this to be an amazing opportunity and Caro was not interested in a film that lacked creative control working on a big-budget Hollywood movie. Caro ended up assisting for a few weeks, with costumes and set design but afterwards, decided to work on a solo career in illustration and computer graphics.[1]

Jeunet directed Amélie (2001), starring Audrey Tautou.[5] Amélie is the story of a woman who takes pleasure in doing good deeds but has trouble finding love herself, was a huge critical and commercial success worldwide and was nominated for several Academy Awards. For this film, Jeunet also gained a European Film Award for Best Director.

In 2004, Jeunet released A Very Long Engagement, an adaptation of the novel by Sébastien Japrisot. The film, starring Audrey Tautou and Jodie Foster, chronicled a woman's search for her missing lover after World War I.[6]

In 2009, he released Micmacs [7] which was about man and his friends who come up with an intricate and original plan to destroy two big weapons manufacturers. [8]

Jeunet has also directed numerous commercials including a 2'25" film for Chanel N° 5 featuring his frequent collaborator Audrey Tautou.

In 2013, Jeunet released The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet an adaptation of Reif Larsen's book: The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet that starred Kyle Catlett. The film was shot in English at various locations in Canada and in Washington, D.C. It was released in 3D.

Filmography

Year Film Director Producer Writer
1991 Delicatessen Yes No Yes
1995 The City of Lost Children Yes No Yes
1997 Alien: Resurrection Yes No No
2001 Amélie Yes No Yes
2004 A Very Long Engagement Yes Yes Yes
2009 Micmacs Yes Yes Yes
2013 The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet Yes Yes Yes

Collaborations

Delicatessen The City of
Lost Children		 Alien:
Resurrection		 Amélie A Very Long
Engagement		 Micmacs The Young and
Prodigious Spivet
Aline Bonetto
No
No
No
No
Urbain Cancelier
No
No
No
Marc Caro
No
No
Jean-Claude Dreyfus
No
No
No
Bruno Delbonnel
No
No
André Dussollier
No
No
No
Madeline Fontaine
No
No
No
No
Ticky Holgado
No
No
No
No
Mathieu Kassovitz
No
No
Darius Khondji
No
No
No
Omar Sy
No
No
No
Yolande Moreau
No
No
Ron Perlman
No
No
Dominique Pinon
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
Rufus
No
No
No
No
Hervé Schneid
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
Audrey Tautou
No
No

Decorations

References

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