Amélie – Jean-Pierre Jeunet
When Le Fabuleux destin d’ Amélie Poulain first came out as just Amélie in American art house theaters, French teachers everywhere rejoiced at the existence of a fun, youthful French film that their students could relate to. A vibrant departure from the black and white Truffaut films they were forced to watch in class, Amélie gave students a reason to love Paris and Audrey Tautou. Jean-Pierre Jeunet basically took a number of interesting quirks and encounters that he experienced growing up, and strung them together into the fanciful adventures of a lonely girl named Amélie Poulain.
In the story, Amélie Poulain, played by the adorable Audrey Tautou, grows up isolated from other children her age. Schooled at home by her mother, she develops an incredibly overactive imagination complex that secretly, everybody wishes they had. Her life as a waitress in Montmartre, the former playground of impressionist artists near the end of the 19th century, is shaken up one day, when she discovers a tin box containing childhood treasures of a boy who used to live in her flat. Her search for one Dominique Brotodeau, owner of the box, leads her and viewers to the familiar characters in her neighborhood. We meet the boisterous grocer who lives downstairs from her, her meek landlady, all the staff at the café where she works, and the grocer’s comical parents. Despite the large cast, Jeunet gives his characters unique quirks, endearing them and making them hard to forget. The landlady is still hung up on her long departed husband, the grocer continuously makes fun of Jamel Debbouze, his assistant and in real life one of France’s hottest comedians of the moment. Even an insignificant character like the grocer’s father gets a quirk: he cannot stop his old ticket puncher habits, and punches holes in his wife’s plants in the middle of the night.
After helping Dominique Brotodeau find his childhood, Amélie resolves to help the friends and strangers around her, giving her lonely life meaning. She helps the blind beggar “see” the happenings of a familiar street, leads the “glass man” in her apartment building to the right expression of the girl with the glass in his annual Renoir reproductions; and even matches the hypochondriac cigarette vendor in her café to a stalker ex-boyfriend of another co-worker.
Aside from the interesting minor characters, Audrey Tautou and Mathieu Kassovitz (a renowned director in his own right) engage in a fantastic chase stemming from a chance encounter in the metro one day. They communicate via ripped up photo booth portraits and flyers. Viewers find that the two dreamers understand each other’s fantasy worlds, eventually making a real connection with someone for the first time in their lives.
Beyond the cute storyline, Amélie is a delight to watch visually. Nominated for five Academy Awards, including cinematography, every scene is carefully composed to show the quaintness of such a large metropolis. Even without the actors, Jean-Pierre Jeunet tells a story about Paris with his creative camera movements and color combinations. In the special features, there is an interesting documentary about how they formed the images, at times highlighting the color of certain objects within a frame, and always placing a soft blue object in the mostly red and green palette of the picture.
Needless to say, Amélie is an A+ for visuals, as well as sound. Yann Tiersen composed a score as cute as the film itself. Jeunet’s unique storyline is drawn from his own life, giving the originality and story A’s. The acting is extremely charming, and in many cases, deliciously amateurish. Most of the minor characters seem as if they are actually just passers-by, acting without being overly stylized. There are minor translation issues for the English subtitles, but for the most part, the adorableness of the story makes up for what is lost in translation. Overall, this film is a very enjoyable A, even for audiences who are afraid of subtitles.
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