-elaborately designed credit sequences
-whimsy and wide-eyed wonder at what a wonderful world we live in
-an obsession with circus themes (the morose clown in Delicatessen, the strongman in City of Lost Children)
-Fellini-esque interest in faces, and in casting people with slightly unusual features
-use of wide angle lens to amplify the strangeness of these faces
-ambiguous settings that always seem to look like the Paris of “Les Miserables”
-an affinity for sappy love stories informed by WWII-era romanticism