Amelie Film Review
Jean-Pierre Jeunet's French Masterpiece Starring Audrey Tautou
A look at the unconventional, romantic film Amelie. The French Blockbuster from Jeunet, the uniquely talented director of Delicatessen and City of Lost Children.
Amelie is an idiosyncratic French film from auteur director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. It's a quirky film, with an outstanding central performance from Audrey Tautou. Amelie is unapologetically moving and romantic, with a story that continues to resonate long after the credits have closed.
The Fabulous Destiny of Amelie Poulain
The eponymous heroine of Amelie is a sweet natured, kooky young woman who has led a sheltered, solitary life. One day Amelie discovers an old tin full of toys, hidden behind a tile in her apartment. This causes her to have an epiphany. She immediately decides to fill her life by secretly performing good deeds and bringing joy to others. She starts by returning the tin of toys to the now fully grown man who used to own them, causing a flood of long forgotten memories to engulf him. This small success urges Amelie on with her mission, but whilst she concentrates on spreading happiness amongst her friends and family, she herself remains a shy, lonely figure.
Then Amelie happens across the intriguing character of Nino (Mathieu Kassovitz), and realises she might have found a soul mate. Before she's even spoken to him, Amelie is smitten by his endearing habit of collecting discarded passport pictures from photo-me booths. When Nino's photo album accidentally falls into Amelie's hands, she has the perfect excuse to initiate contact. But Amelie is not the sort of girl to go for a conventional meet and greet. Instead, she determines to attract his attention with a series of events that pique his interest in the mysterious stranger who found his album. As each tentative step brings Amelie and Nino closer to actually meeting, Amelie's self doubt and trepidation rise to the surface and begin to sabotage her careful plans.
Inventive Imagery Abounds in Amelie
Amelie is filmed in the same gorgeously sumptuous colours fans of Jean-Pierre Jeunet will recognize from his earlier work Delicatessen and City of Lost Children. But the major difference is in tone; Amelie is much lighter in both theme and execution. Jeunet also returns to a wonderful comic device he introduced in his breakthrough short film Foutaises*, when Amelie zips through an eccentric list of her likes and dislikes. There are also moments of absurd fantasy in Amelie, when pictures come to life to have conversations, or the camera sees straight through skin and bones to reveal Amelie's heart all a flutter when she first sets eyes on Nino. These elements of fantasy fit in completely with the dreamy nature of Amelie, and serve to reveal the character's inner machinations in the most perfectly cinematic fashion.
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*Foutaises was released in the USA and UK as Things I Like, Things I Don't Like. It featured interesting visual representations of things the character liked/disliked, combined with a deadpan voice-over, just like in Amelie. Foutaises starred Jeunet regular Dominic Pinon and scooped many awards at film festivals.
