| Amelie
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Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (French: [lə fabylø dɛstɛ̃ d‿ameli pulɛ̃], The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain), or simply Amélie, is a 2001 romantic comedy film directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Written by Jeunet with Guillaume Laurant, the film is a whimsical depiction of contemporary Parisian life, set in Montmartre. It tells the story of a shy waitress, played by Audrey Tautou, who decides to change the lives of those around her for the better, while struggling with her own isolation. The film was an international co-production between companies in France and Germany.
Amélie won best film at the European Film Awards; it won four César Awards (including Best Film and Best Director), two BAFTA Awards (including Best Original Screenplay), and was nominated for five Academy Awards. (See below for other awards and recognition.) Plot
Amélie Poulain is a young woman who has grown up isolated from other
children. Raphaël, her taciturn, antisocial ex-Army-doctor father,
mistakenly believes that she suffers from a form of hypertension
because of her high heart rate. This is actually caused by the rare
thrill of physical contact with her father, who only ever touches her
during medical check-ups. Amandine, her mother, is a neurotic
schoolteacher, who sees to Amélie's education at home. In 1979, Amandine
dies when Amélie is only six years old; she is the victim of a freak
accident involving a Québécoise woman who commits suicide by jumping off the top of Notre Dame Cathedral
and lands on Amélie's mother. Raphaël withdraws even further as a
result, and devotes his life to building in the garden a rather
eccentric memorial to Amandine, complete with a container of her ashes.
Left even more alone, Amélie develops an unusually active imagination.
As a young woman, Amélie is a waitress in The Two Windmills, which is a small Montmartre café, run by a former circus
performer. The café is staffed and frequented by a collection of
eccentrics. At age 23, having spurned romantic relationships following a
few disappointing efforts, Amélie finds contentment in simple
pleasures, such as dipping her hand into sacks of grain, cracking crème brûlée with a teaspoon, skipping stones across St. Martin's Canal, guessing how many couples in Paris are having an orgasm at one moment, and letting her imagination roam free.
L'épicerie of Monsieur Collignon, Rue des Trois Frères, Paris, used as a film location
On August 31, 1997, Amélie, shocked upon hearing the news of Princess Diana's death
on television, drops a bottle cap, which loosens a bathroom wall tile.
Behind the loose tile, she finds an old metal box of childhood
memorabilia hidden by a boy who lived in her apartment decades earlier.
Fascinated by this find, she resolves to track down the now adult man
who placed it there and return it to him, making a deal with herself in
the process: if she finds him and it makes him happy, she will devote
her life to bringing happiness to others.
Amélie meets her reclusive neighbour, Raymond Dufayel, a painter who continually repaints Luncheon of the Boating Party (Le Déjeuner des canotiers) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He is known as 'the Glass Man' because of his brittle bone
condition. With his help, she tracks down the former occupant, and
places the box in a phone booth, ringing the number as he passes to lure
him there. Upon opening the box, the man, moved to tears, has an epiphany
as long-forgotten childhood memories come flooding back. He then finds
his way into the same bar as Amelie and vows to reconcile with his
estranged family. On seeing the positive effect she had on him, she
resolves from that moment on to do good in the lives of others.
Amélie becomes a secret matchmaker and guardian angel,
executing complex but hidden schemes that impact the lives of those
around her with subtle, arm's-length manipulation, leading to several
sub-plots and episodes. She escorts a blind man to the Metro station,
giving him a rich description of the street scenes he passes. She
persuades her father to follow his dream of touring the world by
stealing his garden gnome and having an air-hostess friend send pictures
of it posing with landmarks from all over the world. She kindles a
romance between a co-worker and one of the customers in the bar. She
convinces the unhappy concierge of her building that the husband who
abandoned her had in fact sent her a final reconciliatory love letter
just before his death. She supports Lucien, the young man who works for
Mr. Collignon, the bullying neighbourhood greengrocer; by playing practical jokes on Collignon, she undermines his confidence until he questions his own sanity.
However, while she is looking after others, Mr. Dufayel is observing
her and begins a conversation with her about his painting. Although he
has painted the same piece dozens of times, he has never quite captured
the excluded look of the girl drinking a glass of water. They often
discuss the meaning of this character, and although it is never
explicitly stated, for Dufayel, she comes to represent Amélie and her
lonely life. Through their discussions, Amélie is forced to examine her
own life and her attraction to a stranger, a quirky young man who
collects the discarded photographs of strangers from passport photo
booths. When she accidentally bumps into him a second time and realizes
she is smitten, she is fortunate to be on the scene to pick up his photo
album when he drops it in the street. She discovers his name is Nino
Quincampoix, and she plays a cat and mouse game with him around Paris
before eventually anonymously returning his treasured album; however,
she is too shy to actually approach him, and almost loses hope when,
having finally attempted to orchestrate a proper meeting, she
misinterprets events when he enters into a conversation with one of her
co-workers. It takes Raymond Dufayel's insightful friendship to give her
the courage to overcome her shyness and finally meet with Nino, and the
two conceive a child as described by the narrator: "September 28th,
1997. It is exactly 11am. At the funfair, near the ghost train, the
marshmallow twister is twisting. Meanwhile, on a bench in Villette
Square, Félix Lerbier learns there are more links in his brain than
atoms in the universe. Meanwhile, at the Sacré Coeur, the nuns are
practising their backhand. The temperature is 24°C, humidity 70%,
atmospheric pressure 999 millibars."
The Two Windmills cafe in Montmartre, used as a film location
[edit] Production
In his commentary on the DVD edition, Jeunet explains that he originally wrote the role of Amélie for the British actress Emily Watson; in the original draft, Amélie's father was an Englishman living in London.
However, Watson's French was not strong, and when she became
unavailable to shoot the film, owing to a conflict with the filming of Gosford Park, Jeunet rewrote the screenplay for a French actress. Audrey Tautou was the first actress he auditioned having seen her on the poster for Venus Beauty Institute.
The filmmakers made use of computer-generated imagery and a digital intermediate.[3]
The studio scenes were filmed in the Coloneum Studio in Cologne (Germany).
[edit] Distribution and responses
The film was released in France, Belgium, and French-speaking western Switzerland in April 2001, with subsequent screenings at various film festivals followed by releases around the world. It received limited releases in North America, the UK and Australasia later in 2001.
[edit] Criticism
The film was a critical and commercial success, but it was attacked by critic Serge Kaganski of les Inrockuptibles for its depiction of a largely unrealistic and picturesque vision of contemporary French society, a postcard universe of a bygone France with few ethnic minorities.
If the director was trying to create an idyllic vision of a perfect
Paris, Kaganski argued, he seemed to think that it was necessary to
remove nearly all black people from the scene in order to do so.[4]
Jeunet dismissed such criticism by pointing out both that the photo
collection contains pictures of many different people from numerous
ethnic backgrounds, and that Jamel Debbouze, who plays Lucien, is of Moroccan descent.
[edit] Cannes rejection
Cannes Film Festival selector Gilles Jacob described Amélie
as "uninteresting", and therefore it was not screened at the festival,
although the version he viewed was an early cut without music. The
absence of Amélie at the festival caused something of a
controversy because of the warm welcome by the French media and audience
in contrast with the reaction of the selector.[5]
[edit] Awards and honors
The film was a critical and box office success, gaining wide play internationally as well. It was nominated for five Academy Awards:
In 2001 it won several awards at the European Film Awards, including the Best Film award.
It also won the People's Choice award at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Crystal Globe Award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
In 2002, in France, it won the César Award for Best Film, Best Director, Best Music and Best Production Design. It was also awarded the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics's Prix Mélies (Best French Film) in the same year.
The film was selected by The New York Times as one of "The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made."[6]
The film placed Number 2 in Empire Magazine's The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema.
Entertainment Weekly named the film poster one of the best on its list of the top 25 film posters in the past 25 years.[7]
It also named Amélie setting up a wild goose chase for her beloved Nino
all through Paris as #9 on its list of top 25 Romantic Gestures.[8]
In 2010, an online public poll by the American Cinematographer — the house journal of the American Society of Cinematographers — named Amelie the best shot film of the decade.[9] |
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