Imagine Luc Besson trying to be Jean Pierre-Junet and failing. That's this film.

It's very pretty (except when it's intentionally caricaturishly disgusting, which is often), has an ostensibly feminist bent and a fantastical plot... and, in my opinion, doesn't really understand what it's doing with any of these elements. Again, the cinematography and visuals are lovely in a much more standard, artistically Parisian way than Luc Besson's usual Franco-American action movie milieu, but the characters seem all style and comic book concept, but with no substance. The female lead is unflappable in a way that makes her one-dimensional, and it contrasts all the more with the prosthetic-laden disgusting male characters she's almost singularly surrounded by for the film's runtime who are supposed to be... funny?... show that early 20th century upper class women are pictures of perfection while the men were all grotesque perverts? I don't get what is going on, but it feels like some kind of fetish, like a number of Besson's other films, all of which that I've seen in the past years have fallen far short of the grandeur and humanity of films like _Leon_ and _The Fifth Element_.

Go watch _Amelie_ and _La Cite Des Enfants Perdus_ back-to-back, instead, and you'll have most everything this film tried, but better in most ways. They both have depth of plot, and felt breadth that goes along with it, and the humanity, that this film lacks.