Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Jeunet in 2009
Born (1953-09-03) 3 September 1953
Roanne, Loire, France
Occupation Film director, screenwriter, film producer, television director
Years active 1978–present
Spouse(s) Liza Sullivan

Jean-Pierre Jeunet (French: [ʒɑ̃ pjɛʁ ʒœnɛ]; born 3 September 1953) is a French film director, producer, and screenwriter. His films are known to mix elements of fantasy, reality 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.

Debuting as a director with the acclaimed 1991 black comedy Delicatessen alongside his collaborator Marc Caro, Jeunet went to collaborate with Caro once again with The City of Lost Children (1995). His work with science fiction and horror led Jeunet to become the fourth director to helm the Alien film series with Alien Resurrection (1997), his first and only experience with an American film. In 2001, he would find his biggest success with the release of Amélie, gaining international acclaim and reaching BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century.[1]

Widely regarded as one of the most influential and important directors in modern French cinema, his critical and commercial success earned him three BAFTA Awards for Best Direction and two Academy Award nominations.

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.[2]

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.[2]

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.[3]

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.[4] The success of The City of Lost Children led to an invitation to direct the fourth film in the Alien series, Alien Resurrection (1997).[5] 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.[2]

Jeunet directed Amélie (2001), the story of a woman who takes pleasure in doing good deeds but has trouble finding love herself, which starred Audrey Tautou.[6] 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 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.[7]

In 2009, he released Micmacs [8] which is about a man and his friends who come up with an intricate and original plan to destroy two big weapons manufacturers. [9]

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.

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

Music clips

Acting

  • 1981 : Le Bunker de la dernière rafale, by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro
  • |1983 : Pas de repos pour Billy Brakko, by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
  • 2015 : Institut Lumière remake, by Martin Scorsese (short film)

Awards and nominations

Césars

Oscars

European Film Awards

Edgar Award

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
Serge Merlin
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

  1. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=388cuJ-dR4I
  2. 1 2 3 Ezra, Elizabeth (2008). Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Chicago: Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.
  3. ↑ Maslin, Janet (5 October 1991). "Review/Film Festival; Please, How Many Lentils for Your Musical Saw?". The New York Times.
  4. ↑ Holden, Stephen (15 December 1995). "FILM REVIEW;Out of the Fever Dreams of a Child". The New York Times.
  5. ↑ Maslin, Janet (26 November 1997). "FILM REVIEW; Ripley, Believe It or Not, Has a Secret, and It's Not Pretty". The New York Times.
  6. ↑ Zalewski, Daniel (28 October 2001). "Film; Going Sweet and Sentimental Has Its Rewards". The New York Times.
  7. ↑ Dargis, Manohla (26 November 2004). "A Love That Won't Surrender to War, Death and Oblivion". The New York Times.
  8. ↑ Murphy, Mekado (21 May 2010). "An Eye for Detail, an Imagination at Play". The New York Times.
  9. ↑ Jeunet, Jean-Pierre (2010-06-11), Micmacs, retrieved 2016-07-01
  10. ↑ "Nomination dans l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres janvier 2016". culturecommunication.gouv.fr. 31 March 2016.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.