Amélie

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For other uses, see Amélie (disambiguation).

{{Infobox Film | name = Amélie | imdb_id = 0211915 | caption = IMDB Image:4hv out of 5.png 8.7/10 (76,299 votes)<ref name="imdb">Internet Movie Database as of April 2006</ref> | image = Amelie poster.jpg | writer = Guillaume Laurant (screenplay)
Jean-Pierre Jeunet (scenario) | starring = Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Serge Merlin, Jamel Debbouze | director = Jean-Pierre Jeunet | producer = Jean-Marc Deschamps, Claudie Ossard | movie_music = Yann Tiersen | distributor = Union Générale Cinématographique (France), Miramax (USA)<ref name="imdb" /> | released = April 25 2001 (France)
November 16 2001 (USA) | runtime = 122 min. | language = French | music = Yann Tiersen | budget = €11,400,000<ref name="imdb" /> |}}Image:Amelie.jpg Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain), or Amélie, its English title, is a quirky French romantic comedy directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and starring Audrey Tautou. It was written by Jeunet and Guillaume Laurant. The film is a whimsical and somewhat idealized depiction of contemporary Parisian life, set in touristy areas of Montmartre.

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.

Amélie won best film at the European Movie 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. It received other awards and recognitions.

1 Cast and crew
2 Synopsis
3 Criticism
4 Awards
5 Clips used in the film
6 Other trivia
7 See also
8 References
9 External links

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Cast and crew

Audrey Tautou - Amélie Poulain
Mathieu Kassovitz - Nino Quincampoix
Rufus - Raphaël Poulain, Amélie's father
Yolande Moreau - Madeleine Wallace/Wells, the concierge
Arthus de Penguern - Hipolito, the writer
Urbain Cancelier - Collignon, the grocer
Jamel Debbouze - Lucien
Dominique Pinon - Joseph
Isabelle Nanty - Georgette
Maurice Benichou - Bretodeau

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Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Amélie is the story of a girl who grows up isolated from other children. Her mother dies when she is young. Her father, a doctor, never hugs her. He only touches her for her monthly checkup, and this rare thrill causes her heart to race. As a result, her father believes she has a heart condition and keeps her away from other children while she grows up. Left to amuse herself, she develops an unusually active imagination

Amélie grows up and becomes a waitress in a small Montmartre café, The Two Windmills, run by a former circus performer. By age 22, life for Amélie is simple. She enjoys small pleasures like cracking crème brûlées with a teaspoon, going for walks in the Paris sunshine observing people, skipping stones across St. Martin's Canal, trying to guess how many people in the world are having an orgasm at one moment ("Fifteen!", as she tells the camera), and letting her imagination roam free. One day, behind a loose bathroom tile she finds an old metal box of childhood memorabilia hidden by a boy who lived in her apartment decades past. She resolves to track down the now-grownup man who put it there and return it to him. If she finds him and it makes him glad, she will devote her life to goodness; if not, too bad.

After a bit of detective work she tracks him down, and places the box in a phone booth. When he passes by the booth, she rings the number to lure him there. He opens the box and has an epiphany as long-forgotten childhood memories come flooding back. She trails him to a nearby bar and observes him but does not reveal herself. When she sees the positive effect she had on him, she resolves from that moment on to do good in the life of other people, including her father, her co-workers, the concierge of her building, and Lucien, the boy who works for the abusive owner of the neighborhood vegetable stand.

But while she is looking after others, no one seems to be looking after Amélie, and internally, she recognizes that this unrequited devotion to the other people in her life is going to lead to her eventual death from despair.

She befriends a recluse painter in her building, who teaches her to do things for her own happiness as well as others'. She repairs relationships, and even starts one of her own with Nino Quincampoix, a quirky young man who collects the discarded photographs of strangers. She eventually gains his love by the most delightfully roundabout methods imaginable, involving something almost like a treasure hunt and a constant teasing promise to reveal her identity to him if he continues following her, and still manages to give peace of mind and happiness to her neighbors.

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Criticism

Image:Jamel Amelie.jpg The film was a critical and commercial success, but it was attacked by critics such as 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 people from ethnic minorities — some kind of latent lepénisme. <ref>http://www.chez.com/dubreucq/amelie/presse/presse.html#Lib%E93 Template:Fr</ref> Paris is an ethnically diverse city, and there is next to Montmartre an area (Barbès-Rochechouart) that includes many black residents, none of whom are visible in the film. If the director was trying to create an idyllic vision of a perfect Paris, the critics argued, he seemed to think that it was necessary to remove all black people from the scene in order to do so.

Others, such as David Martin-Castelnau and Guillaume Bigot, contended that such criticism was unwarranted and was rather the sign of a sick contempt of some of the "elite" for the common people represented in the movie. <ref>http://www.chez.com/dubreucq/amelie/presse/presse.html#Lib%E92 Template:Fr</ref> Jean-Pierre Jeunet responded to the criticisms by pointing out that Jamel Debbouze, who plays Lucien, is of North African origin.

One may also point out that, given the current gentrification of the Montmartre area, a young waitress like Amélie probably does not have the financial means to live close to her workTemplate:Fact. The film does depict an improbable universe where Amélie lives close to her work (without the need for lengthy métro or other transportation) and has plenty of free time outside her job.

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Awards

The film was a critical and box office success, gaining wide play internationally as well. It was nominated for five Academy Awards:

Best Art Direction, Aline Bonetto (art director), Marie-Laure Valla (set decorator)
Best Cinematography, Bruno Delbonnel
Best Foreign Language Film, France
Best Original Screenplay, Guillaume Laurant, Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Best Sound, Vincent Arnardi, Guillaume Leriche, Jean Umansky

In 2001 it won several awards at the European Movie 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:

The film was selected by The New York Times as one of "The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made."<ref>http://www.nytimes.com/ref/movies/1000best.html</ref>

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Clips used in the film

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

The film featured film or video clips from the following:

A TV performance by the manic guitar-playing gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe<ref name="imdb" />;
An excerpt of the documentary Born for Hard Luck, by Tom Davenport<ref>http://www.folkstreams.net/film,1</ref>
An excerpt of the 1998 documentary Seventeen Seconds to Sophie by Bill Cote<ref>http://www.atomfilms.com/af/content/atom_147</ref><ref>http://www.bcvideo.com/fmom20.html (entire 56-second film is downloadable)</ref>

One of films playing when Amelie is at the theatre is François Truffaut's New Wave film "Jules et Jim". It's the one with the woman and two men running on an overpass.

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Other trivia

In English-speaking countries, the film was first released as Amélie from MontmartreTemplate:Fact.
The film made use of computer-generated imagery and a digital intermediate Template:Fact.
The tagline was "She'll change your life …" (in French, "Elle va changer votre vie …").
Jeunet originally wrote the role of Amélie for the British actress Emily Watson Template:Fact; 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 auditionedTemplate:Fact.
Amélie was not screened at the Cannes Film Festival. Juenet decided not to release it after the cold reception of his previous film, The City of Lost ChildrenTemplate:Fact. The film selector, Gilles Jacob described the film as "uninteresting"<ref>http://www.avclub.com/content/node/22708</ref>, although the version Jacob had seen was an early version without music. The absence of Amélie in the French 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.
In one scene, Amélie is visiting the former concierge of the building in which she lives, and she passes a new model Volkswagen Beetle in the street. This car was not in production at the time the film is set. Jeunet acknowledges this in the director's commentary, saying that he wanted to keep the car anyway to reflect the personality of Amélie.
In the English subtitled version the concierge, Madeleine Wallace is renamed Madeleine Wells. In the original French, she mentions that she is destined to cry because of her surname Wallace, comparing it to Wallace fountains of Paris. The English version does the same, comparing Wells to water wells.