Amélie (2001, R)

 

This is the first foreign film that I truly loved.  It kicked off my deep admiration for Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s work, and it’s one of those films that sparks your affection for every actor who appeared in it (chiefly, of course, the fabulous Audrey Tautou in the title role.)  It’s a movie I can watch time and time again, one that never feels long or lagging.

 

Amélie is a young French woman who works as a waitress in a café.  Though a charming, imaginative oddball, she’s almost debilitatingly shy and generally keeps to herself.  However, a twist of fate unearths the lost treasures of a young boy who lived in her apartment decades ago, and she resolves to reunite the trinkets with their owner.  Her stratagem pays off well, and she sets about becoming a secret do-gooder.  It’s only herself that she has trouble helping, as she may scheme herself out of a potential love connection.

 

It’s such a vibrant, beautiful film, saturated with color and crammed with amusing characters.  It flits lightly between the past and the present, as well as in and out of fantasy.  It employs an even-keeled narrator, infrequent notes scrawled on the screen, and the occasional aside to the viewer to hold the high-flying plot together, and the result is the cinematic equivalent of a crème brûlée.  I’m hard-pressed to voice just how delightful it is.

 

Amélie’s inventive machinations in others’ lives play a big part of that.  She enchantingly weaves curious details and tidbits into her gifts of kindness.  She collects overheard remarks, interesting news articles, and entertaining television clips and marries them to her careful observations of the people in her life.  Quietly, whimsically, she figures out what they need and gives it to them in the most creative way possible.  Using everything from love letters to garden gnomes, numerous lives become a bit brighter due to Amélie.

 

I also love the way the film celebrates people’s quirks and obsessions, their simple pleasures and pet peeves.  Nearly every character is introduced with a brief introduction of what they like (such as popping bubble wrap or polishing parquet) and don’t like (such as wet swimming trunks or seeing men embarrassed in front of their children,) and many have a singular, consuming interest.  Dufayel, Amélie’s neighbor, has painted new versions of the same Renoir painting for 20 years, and Amélie’s would-be soul mate Nino keeps a scrapbook of discarded pictures from photo booths.  These details and preoccupations are sprinkled so lovingly throughout the film that it feels uniquely human – messy, fond, a little crazy, and above all, remarkably individual.

 

As Amélie and Nino, Audrey Tautou and Matthieu Kassovitz both make their first Jeunet appearances here but fit seamlessly into his world (Tautou later worked with Jeunet again in the excellent A Very Long Engagement.)  The rest of the film is populated by many of his talented, slightly odd-looking regulars, including the terrific Dominique Pinon as a man scorned and Rufus as Amélie’s sedate father.

 

Warnings

 

Language, some drinking, and very French sexual content, including nudity and brief flashes of sex scenes.