Jean-Pierre Jeunet's ‘Violette' Lands at Sony Pictures Classics

Many have written off Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who hasn't made a well-reviewed movie in nearly two decades. That's not easy to say about the guy who gave us "Delicatessen," "The City of Lost Children" and, of course, "Amélie," which still holds up as one of the defining foreign imports of the 2000s.

I guess I should briefly address the elephant in the room: Jeunet also directed what many consider the worst "Alien" movie, 1997's "Alien: Resurrection." For the longest time, though, that seemed like a blip in an otherwise acclaimed filmography.

However, the last decade-plus has been rough. "The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet" (2013) was a misfire that barely got released. Then came nearly a decade of silence, followed by "Bigbug," the robot-uprising comedy Netflix dumped in February 2022. Nobody was talking about it a week later. He seemed lost, stuck repeating a visual style that had become a parody of itself.

So color me intrigued by today's news that Sony Pictures Classics has acquired U.S. rights to "Violette," Jeunet's new film.

Adapted from Valérie Perrin's bestseller "Fresh Water for Flowers," it stars Leïla Bekhti as Violette, a cemetery caretaker whose quiet life is upended when a stranger (Melvil Poupaud) shows up wanting to bury his mother's ashes in the grave of someone she never knew. Old secrets start surfacing. Matthias Schoenaerts co-stars.

The last time Jeunet worked from a novel with this kind of weight was "A Very Long Engagement" in 2004, and that was arguably his last well-received film.

By the way, this is SPC's fourth Jeunet film after "The City of Lost Children," "Amélie" and "Micmacs." There's no U.S. release plan yet, but Studiocanal is releasing the film in France next month, so we'll keep an eye on its reception. Is it a comeback? Too early to say.