Soundtrack: La Cité des Enfants Perdus
Composer/Artist(s): Angelo Bardalamenti
Year: 1995
Genre(s): Dramatic Score

DOWNLOAD -- The City of Lost Children

Last week I got excellent feedback on Chantal Goya's Glorious Compilation and score from Masculin Feminin. This week I stay in France, but go for something completely different. Jumping a few decades later into a very dramatic score for an absurdly brilliant and imaginative film from Jean-Pierre Jeunet.



The City of Lost Children is one of those films that looks dated, but from what era? It's hard to put your finger on time and place , because the world is not ours. It's like ours, but it's completely different. The film is a dark, scary, seedy and fantastical world for kids that run with underworld small people to conquer evil. And these bandits aren't exactly saints themselves.

Angelo Bardalamenti's score sets the pace and tone well, however it doesn't have the variety and transcendent tone of other Jean-Pierre Jeunet films (in particular the romantic charm in the score for Amelié). This soundtrack is one of several standouts in Barlamenti's prolific career of setting the tone in many a dreamlike realities. Most known for scoring David Lynch's films, Bardalamenti is always dense to swallow. The third film he scored was the mind-bending 80's score for Blue Velvet. He also scored Wild at Heart and did all the compositions (not the electronic/rock) for Lost Highway, which are career-noteworthy as well. The standout sellout in Bardalamenti's career has to be the hilarious American holiday classic Christmas Vacation. To be honest, I can't even believe the same guy who scored Muholland Drive scored the animated opening to the national lampoon favorite.



As I mentioned two weeks back in the relationship between imagery and music in Lost in Translation, I thought it would be worth noting similarities with this film. Darius Khondji who is without a doubt one of my favorite cinematographers shot and set the visual style of this alternate world. I think the balance of the light and shape can be applied to both the look and sound of this film. The collaboration between music and shot work so well, that just a few years later Khondji shot under-rated DiCaprio pic The Beach, where Bardalamenti again scored.

As a whole, the album is most definitely a complete score. Unless you are building robots, sneaking around on All Hallow's Eve or just doing something mysterious this is a hard one for background listening. However, a few of the songs-- most notably "L'Execution" or "Cerises pour un diner a deux" are amazingly interesting songs for intellectual listening. This album would be perfect for studying, not so good for sex. Hmmm. Sex Music. Stay tuned for next week...