He worked for Hollywood as the director of "Alien: Resurrection" (1997), placing it, I wrote, "in what looks like a large, empty hanger filled with prefabricated steel warehouse parts." With "Amelie," he has shaken loose from his obsession with rust and clutter, and made a film so filled with light and air, it's like he took the cure.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet has specialized in films of astonishing visual invention but, alas, impenetrable narratives ("Delicatessen," "The City of Lost Children"). There must be times when Nino wonders if he is being blessed or stalked. She wants Nino, but some pixie quirk prevents her from going about anything in a straightforward manner and success holds no bliss for her unless it comes about through serendipity. Then she meets Nino (the director Mathieu Kassovitz), who works indifferently in a porn shop and cares only for his hobby, which is to collect the photos people don't want from those automated photo booths and turn them into collages of failed facial expressions.Īmelie likes Nino so much that one day when she sees him in her cafe, she dissolves. It never existed, but that's OK.Īfter discovering the box and bringing happiness to its owner, Amelie improvises other acts of kindness: painting word-pictures of a busy street for a blind man, for example, and pretending to find long-lost love letters to her concierge from her dead husband, who probably never mailed her so much as a lottery ticket. Of course this is not a realistic modern Paris, and some critics have sniffed about that, too: It is clean, orderly, safe, colorful, has no social problems, and is peopled entirely by citizens who look like extras from " An American in Paris." This is the same Paris that produced Gigi and Inspector Clouseau. 87), but I know what the vote reflects: Immediate satisfaction with a film that is all goodness and cheer-sassy, bright and whimsical, filmed with dazzling virtuosity, and set in Paris, the city we love when it sizzles and when it drizzles. I am not sure "Amelie" is better than " Fargo" (No.
#Amelie movie movie
It went on to win the audience awards at the Edinburgh, Toronto and Chicago film festivals, and I note on the Internet Movie Database that it is currently voted the 54th best film of all time, and hasn't even opened in America yet. The movie played in the commercial theaters of the back streets, where audiences vibrated with pleasure. "Not serious," sniffed the Very Serious authorities who decide these matters.
I first began hearing about "Amelie" last May at the Cannes Film Festival, where there was a scandale when "Amelie" was not chosen for the Official Selection. So, she will amuse herself (and us) by devising the most extraordinary stratagems for bringing about their happiness. And in tracking down the man who was that boy, and returning his box, Amelie finds her life's work: She will make people happy. Yes, the shock of the news causes Amelie to drop a bottle cap, which jars loose a stone in the wall of her flat, which leads her to discover a rusty old box in which a long-ago boy hoarded his treasures. Amelie grows up lonely and alone, a waitress in a corner bistro, until one day the death of Princess Diana changes everything.
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