Home » Film & TV » Foreign Films » Amelie

Amelie

© John Nesbit

Sometimes it's enough to attend the cinema to escape to another world, more innocent and romantic than the one that we inhabit. Such is the case for Amelie, as sweet and pleasing visual experience as I've seen the past couple of months. Much credit for the bright and colorful look must go to cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, who makes the Montmarte section of Paris look especially inviting. Never have Parisians looked warmer, whether inside a sleazy adult video store, embarking on an old fun house ride, practicing backhands against the La Sacré Coeur, or drinking coffee at a local bistro.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who previously directed Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, has crafted a charming and life affirming tale of an introverted café waitress that crafts elaborate schemes and practical jokes to either bring happiness or some measure of justice to others. In light of recent terrorist attacks, it's refreshing to see a character that reach out to relative strangers the way that Amelie (Audrey Tautou) does.

Amelie leads a fanciful and sheltered life, and has done so ever since childhood where she once was led to believe that she had caused accidents by taking photographs. Her method of extracting revenge on the soccer loving neighbor who perpetrated this idea is very creative and hilarious. Introverts will especially appreciate the way Amelie observes people from afar and conjures various whimsies, like the time she gazes over the rooftops wonders how many people are experiencing orgasms at that moment. (Jeunet does provide a montage at that point) Another example of dark humor occurs with the bizarre death of Amelie's mother.

Her life changing experience occurs co-incidentally with the death of Princess Di when she inadvertently discovers a box of someone's childhood treasures dating from the 1950's. Recalling her own sheltered childhood life, she determines to return some childhood joy to the unknown owner of the box. Witnessing the tears of the recipient, Amelie sets out to create more happiness in the world.

She matches up a crochety café customer (Dominique Pinon) with the café's self conscious pharmacist (Isabelle Naty) for a grinding tryst in the restroom, creates a 40 year old letter to convince her concierge (Yolande Moreau) that her wayfaring husband's last dying thoughts were of his wife, brings new tasty delicacies to a shut in artist (Michel Robin), and helps an innocent simple minded grocery clerk by creating imaginative booby traps in the apartment of his abusive boss. The most comical trick she pulls off benefits her "cold fish" stay-at-home father, who gets hilarious Polaroid pictures of his prized ceramic gnome travelling the globe and posing in front of the Statue of Liberty or a Cambodian Buddhist temple.