Resurrecting the Alien Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet in Hollywood

This paper examines the critical reception of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Alien Resurrection in the popular Anglo-American press, where the film was often discussed in terms that highlighted the director's status as an outsider. The anxiety that the film elicits among critics, it is argued, is a function of the very abjection that is depicted graphically within the film: a fear of the unclassifiable and of the crossing of boundaries.