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Madeline: Lost in Paris is a 1999 American animated direct-to-video film, produced by DIC.

Compared to the episodes and other feature films of the franchise, this story has rather dark themes.

The animated musical film is released to VHS on August 3, 1999 by Walt Disney Home Video under the Disney imprint.

Shout! Factory released the film to DVD on April 3, 2010.

Characters[]

Plot[]

It's late winter in the city of Paris. The snow is falling one morning. At the Boarding School, the Girls prepare to head out for their morning walk. Genevieve frolics around in the snow, as the Girls wait for Miss Clavel. Just then, back in the school, they hear Miss Clavel sneezing. They head back inside to tend to her, as Madeline calls Dr. Cohn. Mrs. Murphy makes some hot tea for Miss Clavel, while Dr. Cohn examines her. He deduces that she needs to rest and tells the girls to look after her.

That evening, the snow has gotten worse. The girls are in their bedroom, feeling doubtful in their ability to look after Miss Clavel. Madeline asks the group what else they can do to care for Ms. Clavel. Everyone pitches their ideas, referencing how their families usually tend to them when they are sick. All their stories, while heartwarming, seem to make Madeline more despondent. She speaks about her previous experiences with her mother and father, before abruptly ending the story. She tragically reveals that her parents have since died, leaving her all alone without family. The other girls burst into tears, before Ms. Clavel wakes up from the commotion and comforts them.

The next morning, the postman delivers a letter. It comes from Madeline's long-lost Uncle Horst from Vienna, Austria. In a few days, he was going to travel to Paris to visit his niece. Madeline is delighted by the news, and cherishes the prospect of having a family. Uncle Horst arrives the next morning, and he instantly recognizes Madeline, before stating that he is from her mother's side of the family. He quickly calls in his cab driver to hand out some boxes containing gifts, elegant lace collars.

As everyone warms up to their guest, he drops more bitter news. Uncle Horst hands Miss Clavel a court document detailing his guardianship of Madeline. As he lives and works in Vienna, he needs to return and intends to bring Madeline with him. He claims that there is a renowned finishing school in the city that his niece will attend While Madeline is caught off-guard by the prospect of leaving her friends behind, she feels obliged to follow her family's footsteps. Horst says they will be leaving for Vienna tomorrow aboard the Orient Express.

That evening at dinner, Madeline and her classmates inform her uncle about their accomplishments, hoping to convince him to allow her to stay. Horst assures them that the Viennese school will provide a much more fulfilling experience, and that Madeline's new class will be filled with royalty. As they continue discussing, Horst becomes increasingly irritated and dismissive of their accomplishments, and remains adamant to bring Madeline with him. After dinner, Lord Cucuface drives Horst to his hotel in his limo, where he brings up the subject Madeline's inheritance. Horst shows interest in this, and promises that he will act as the trustee until Madeline becomes of age.

Before Madeline leaves for Vienna with her uncle the next morning, Miss Clavel gives Madeline her mother's necklace. After Madeline leaves, Pepito then arrives to bid farewell to his friend and to give her a farewell gift, unaware that she has already left. Unable to leave things like that, Pepito orders his family's chauffeur to drive himself, Miss Clavel, and her students to the Austerlitz train station.

Instead of taking Madeline to the train station, Uncle Horst leads his niece and Genevieve to the Paris Métro instead. Horst claims that before departing, they will buy her a new dress. As they are about to board the Metro, Uncle Horst forces his niece to abandon Genevieve, and when Madeline protests, he shuts her down curtly. By now, his attitude is becoming more impatient, and he sternly tells Madeline to stop questioning him and to follow his directions.

At the train station, Pepito, Miss Clavel, and her students rush to meet the Orient Express before its departure for Vienna. However, they find out that the two are not even booked for the train. Miss Clavel and her students begin to suspect that something is wrong, and that Horst might have had nefarious intentions in mind. After failing to find Madeline, they find Genevieve coming out from the Metro. Miss Clavel then decides to contact the police.

Uncle Horst takes his niece to the other side of Paris, to an unfamiliar part of the town ravaged by poverty and crime. Realizing that she is being kidnapped, she breaks her mother's necklace and drops one of the beads on the Metro's steps. As they continue through the streets, Madeline continues discreetly dropping beads without Horst knowing. After walking several blocks, Horst and his niece arrive in front of a lace shop. As Horst arrives to open the door, he accidentally drops Madeline's suitcase on his foot, and curses in French. Madeline's suspicions are now confirmed, and questions her uncle why he lost his Austrian accent, before accusing him of being a liar. Horst angrily proceeds to drag his "niece" into the lace shop, as she demands to know his real identity. He reveals his name to be Henri, and that he is not related to Madeline at all, before taking her down a stairwell into a dark cellar.

The basement of the shop turns out to be a sweatshop, run by a tall, intimidating, gray-haired woman who identifies herself as Madame LaCroque. Madeline finds nine other girls around her age working at the various tables on various lace patterns. LaCroque immediately puts Madeline to work, and threatens Madeline with haircuts if she works too slowly or rebels. LaCroque proceeds to reveal that she was the one who had forged the court documents that established Henri as Madeline's guardian. Together, they plan to send a fraudulent tuition bill each month for the non-existent School in Vienna to the bank where Madeline's family fortunes are kept, steadily milking the trust fund with ease.

After Miss Clavel contacts the police, she is taken to the station to file a missing person's report. There, she is asked to describe Uncle Horst to the sketch artist, who is unable to sketch anything that even remotely resembles the man who took Madeline. Miss Clavel's students and Pepito express doubt that the adults can solve the problem, and resolve to find Madeline by themselves. They sneak out onto the Metro, an at each station, Genevieve sniffs the platform for Madeline's scent. They spend all day working their way down the line until it 6:00 PM. The children are dismayed at the lack of success, but resolve to continue their work.

At the workshop, LaCroque finally ends the workday at 7 PM. She lines up the girls to collect their finished lace patterns. When it is Fifi's turn to hand her lace pattern, LaCroque is angered, as Fifi's coughing has ruined the white lace, turning it yellow. Fifi apologizes meekly and begs for mercy, but it falls on deaf ears. As punishment, she assigns Fifi to only work with black lace, intending to make an example to her fellow slaves. Fifi sobs in despair and tells Madeline that working on black lace in the dark can cause blindness.

Hearing this injustice, Madeline stands up to LaCroque. Unfortunately, this only serves to further infuriate LaCroque who decides to lock Madeline into a detention room, before walking away with Henri, laughing at her. Madeline proceeds to remove a brick from the wall, allowing her to communicate with the other girls. She encourages them to escape. Fifi is not as optimistic, as she has already tried doing so, but failed. As a result, LaCroque cut her hair to make lace.

Fifi proceeds to tell LaCroque's background story, that their taskmaster used to be a famous cabaret dancer. During one performance, she had an accident and fell off the stage. She was publicly humiliated and stopped performing after that, before she sold her long hair to make lace. Unlike Madeline, the other factory workers are all orphans, and had neither money nor connections. LaCroque and Henri had lied to the courts, promising to take care of them, but instead treated them as slaves. Madeline tells the girls that while they are not bound by blood, they are still a family. The girls are comforted and touched by such words, and share a good laugh.

The next day, Madeline and the other factory slaves craft their own plans for damage. They reconfigure their lace patterns to create distress messages to customers. Unfortunately, LaCroque quickly catches on to their plan. After she and Henri leave, Madeline formulates a new plan and snatches some cheese from LaCroque's desk. She proceeds to pass the cheese to the other girls, before sewing bits of it into the lace. Their pet mouse quickly takes interest, then bites into and rips up the threads. LaCroque sees this and becomes irritated. She demands to know who is messing with her operation, but since the mouse has eaten all the cheese, there is no evidence to pin the blame. However, she strongly suspects Madeline as the culprit.

In the ground-level lace store of the workshop, a wealthy female customer requests a red lace collar, to which LaCroque agrees. After the client leaves, LaCroque proceeds to tell Henri to sell off Madeline's possessions, and to use the money to buy a new strong lock, planning to keep Madeline in the detention room from then on.

In the cellar, Madeline and her new friends form a human pyramid in an attempt to escape through the window. Just as they are about to succeed, LaCroque arrives downstairs. The pyramid quickly collapses and the girls hide themselves under the tables. A few blocks away, Henri is making his way through the streets with Madeline's suitcase. Meanwhile, Miss Clavel is riding around with the police through the neighborhood. Although Henri has changed his outfit, Miss Clavel instantly recognizes him and proves him to be the man responsible for Madeline's abduction by opening up the suitcase in his hand, which is filled with a little girl's clothes and toys. Henri, however, crosses his arms and snorts, choosing to stay silent.

Through following the trail of necklace beads that Madeline had dropped, Miss Clavel's students and Pepito find their way to LaCroque's lace shop. After seeing LaCroque cutting off some of Madeline's hair, Pepito then spots a fishing rod in the trash, and fastens his Brazilian shrunken head to the end, before swinging it back and forth through a broken window. Meanwhile, Miss Clavel and the police are able to convince Henri to show them where he had taken Madeline, after promising that he will be shown leniency from the courts.

As LaCroque is about to cut off more of Madeline's hair, Pepito swings his shrunken at the back of LaCroque's head, which knocks off her wig, revealing her bald head. After seeing the shrunken head, LaCroque shrieks in terror and falls on her back. She drops both her scissors and the key to the workshop, trying to escape from the shrunken head. Fifi grabs both, and unlocks the door to the dungeon. Meanwhile, Madeline, Tanya, and Violet tie up LaCroque with endless rolls of lace and string.

The police cruiser then arrives at the lace shop, carrying both Miss Clavel and Henri. Hearing LaCroque shouting in anger and defeat at Madeline, they realize that they have come to the right place. The policemen, Miss Clavel, and Henri find LaCroque tied up and defeated, and Miss Clavel's students and well as Pepito partaking in the rescue. LaCroque pleads innocent and tells the policemen that Henri was the one responsible for everything. Hearing this, Henri panics and attempts to flee, but he is cornered on all sides. As he is about to make a dash for the stairwell, Pepito picks up two rolls of lace and trips him, allowing Fifi, Anne, Monique, and Susan to dump lace patterns on him as well. The police promise that there will be a substantial financial reward for the capture of the two crime lords, before hauling away both LaCroque and Henri.

LaCroqueArrested

Madame LaCroque gets arrested by the police.

A few weeks later, summer has arrived in Paris. Madeline chose to use her reward money to help start a charitable boarding school for the lace shop slaves and other orphans in Paris. Lord Cucuface hosts a grand opening ceremony to much fanfare. He congratulates Madeline and his new set of students for their bravery and dedication.

The film ends with a reprise of the song "Family".

Cast[]

Songs[]

Trivia[]

  • This is Pepito's first film appearance along with his parents. He later returns in Madeline in Tahiti.
  • Henri, LaCroque, Fifi and her fellow Lace shop Girls, Roxy, Tanya, Kelly, Heather, Susan, Claire, Patty and Violet, are the only exclusive characters who appear in the movie, thus never making another appearance.
  • Heather is the only character who dosen't have her own line in the movie.
  • Madeline is the only known student at Miss Clavel’s school who is an orphan.
  • This was the last production of Madeline which included Christopher Plummer (he died in later years) as the narrator.
  • This is the only animated movie where Lord Cucuface and Pepito appear together. (Pepito is absent in My Fair Madeline and Lord Cucuface is absent in Madeline in Tahiti.)
  • This is the last time Janine has her light skin and blond hair, Sylvie has her Olive green hair, Monique has her pink hair,and the girls’ night gowns are yellow. In the next season of Madeline, Janine has medium skin and dark brown hair, Sylvie’s hair changed to light brown, and Monique’s hair is also brown, and the girls night gowns are lavender.
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