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Amelie

Starring: Audrey Tatou
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Genre: Comedy
Year: 2001
Rating: 4 / 5

Reviewed by Guest Scribe Legend

Amelie is a breath of fresh air in the realm of foreign language films. It is just about as bizarre as the others are (at least, from an American perspective - our sense of humor and culture is noticeably different). However, it is a highly creative movie which tries to prove the old adage that "There's someone out there for everybody."

Through the course of the film we see Amelie's troubled childhood, one which has made her an extraordinary introvert. Nonethelless, she is a good-hearted person. She's a dreamer. She's clever. She's impulsive and shy at the same time. So much time in isolation as a child has made her mind work in uncharacteristic ways. She spends much time thinking about what could be instead of taking her head out of the clouds. However, she is, if nothing else, extremely likeable as the protagonist. And this accomplishment rests solely on the shoulders of Audrey Tatou, who with the success in this film has already reached mega-stardom in France.

Amelie the introvert decides to become a bit more proactive in the world the day she finds a fifty-year-old box and seeks to return it to the man who it belonged to as a child. However, she does not do this in a conventional sense, but her creativity works in such a way as to perform her act of kindness from afar. With this success, she decides to become a regular do-gooder and intervenes in the lives of others from afar. Her most memorable and humorous meddling comes at the expense of the greengrocer, Collignon (Urbain Concelier), who mistreats his simpleton assistant Lucien (Jamel Debbouze).

Most of the movie, however, is devoted to Amelie and the crush she has on a kindred spirit (another weirdo). This one is a sex shop employee named Nino (Mathieu Kassovitz) who has the bizarre hobby of finding ripped up photos under instant photo booths, mending them, and placing them in albums. Why exactly Nino is the one for Amelie is not readily apparent. After all, everyone in this movie is plain weird. Amelie's super, Madeleine (Yolande Moreau) has stuffed her dead pet and positioned him to dutifully watch a wall picture of her deceased philandering husband. There's also a kooky old painter who calls himself the Glass Man, a hypochondriac, a stalker who records every movement of his ex-girlfriend on a dictating machine, and Amelie's own father, who is obsessed with lawn ornaments. (Amelie's use of a lawn gnome in this film is particularly humorous).

But in a world in which everyone is so gosh darn weird, the film falls short in conveying exactly why Nino is so perfect for Amelie. In this world, there are lots of people out there just as weird as she is! Maybe he's just especially weird and that's weird enough for her. However, the film is, above all things, clever. Clever cinematography, style of narration and sequencing, clever plot, and clever acting. Sometimes Amelie is too cute for its own good, but, overall, it is an enjoyable watch.

Cast:

Certification: Rated R for sexual situations.
Running Time: 122 minutes.

Additional Info: Internet Movie Database
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