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MOVIE CRITIQUE:
Audrey Tautou was made for the movie "Amelie" and the movie "Amelie" was made for Audrey Tautoo. Rarely
has an actress been cast is a role of a lifetime, a role in which she then defined as her own and a role in which she breathed
such effervescent life that we are all the happier for it. Maybe "happy" is too pedestrian a word for her and for
this movie. Perhaps "thrilled" or "enthralled" might be better terms, for this is one rare jewel of a
movie.
"Amelie", after a slower, but equally humorous, introductory section about the young Amelie (Flora Guiet), quickly
ramps up into a glorious, joyous, humorous, fun-filled cinematic extravaganza that leaves you breathless from the sheer joy
of its inventive quirkiness.
Like "happy," the term "feel-good" might also apply to this movie, but that jaded term is also much
too pedestrian for this glorious, rapturous tribute to life and love from French director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet. He deserves
much of the credit in bringing such a high level of imagination to this production. He shares the co-writing credit with Guillarme
Laurant, who also did the screenplay.
What a team!
No creative stone was left unturned in the making of this movie or in the telling of Amelie's story. It might be said
that all geniuses in many ways are like little children, and this director seems to have suffused his childlike sense of fun
and awe into every facet of this film. You just sit in the theater absolutely astonished (after you have finished laughing!)
from all the pleasurable little cinematic nuances that he throws at you to embellish the telling of her story.
And Amelie herself is no less inventive. This movie is a triptych of her childhood, her move to Montemarte with the developing
of her ability to influence others, and a final, glorious love story where Amelie learns how to find love for herself, never
having known it before.
The way she sets up her intended lover into such a state of curiosity at who she is (for they have yet to meet), well...
Words almost fail me here, but this is certainly one of the most original love stories that you will ever see.
Most of this movie takes place before he even gets to meet this ineffable little gamine of a creature. The dictionary
defines "gamine" as a small, playful mischievous girl, especially a street urchin of the female variety ("gamin"
being the male version). The last actress referred to as a gamine was Audrey Hepburn, although I question this appellation
when applied to her.
While Hepburn was blessed with the sweetness and the light and the innocence, no one could ever imagine that sophisticated
daughter of a Baroness as ever being a street urchin. We can with Amelie. One look from those two huge expressive brown eyes,
and who wouldn't fall in love with this child-woman? She had no faith in herself during this movie, but does she ever light
up the screen for us with her presence!
"Amelie" is being touted by many for Oscar consideration, especially in the Best Foreign Language film category.
As the powerhouse Miramax is behind this film, I have no doubt that they will achieve their objectives.
But there will be no complaint from me in this department as there was with their movie, "Chocolat," last year.
"Chocolat," though well acted, is a slight movie and an even slighter story. "Amelie," on the other hand,
is glorious in all regards: a sensational story that is well-told, beautifully filmed, and gloriously acted by all involved.
Many of you reading this review, especially you men, would rather go through an IRS audit than sit through a foreign-language
film.
Please take my advice this one time as I doubt that you took it last spring when I raved about the movie, "The Princess
and the Warrior," by the German director Tom Tykwer. This was another great story with an astonishing, Oscar-worthy performance
by Franka Potente. She had earlier thrilled me in "Run, Lola Run," also by Tykwer. This movie has one of the most
intense and fascinating scenes that I have ever seen in a movie. In addition, it is also a great, though offbeat, love story.
"Amelie" is much the same as a gloriously fresh and wonderfully inventive love story about a young lady who
will capture the heart of everyone who sees this movie. She surely captured mine.
MOVIE SYNOPSIS:
Amelie was born the daughter of a middle-class doctor, Raphael Poulain (Rufus), who is cold and distant and never related
to her, held her, or told her he loved her. His only touch came during his monthly medical exams of her, and the thrill of
being touched during those exams causes her heart to race so much that he is convinced that she has a bad heart. The only
prescription for this ailment is home confinement with school studies being given by her mother, a nervous, high-strung creature.
So Amelie grows up isolated from friends and society and by necessity ends up forging an imaginary world of her own.
Her mother passes away while she is very young, and the rest of her youth is spent playing pranks on the neighbors and
talking to her Dad, who knows that she is there, but doesn't listen to a word that she is saying. In fact he hardly ever listens
to a word that she is saying, even when she has turned into an adult. The lack of support in her relationship with her father
causes Amelie to move away to Montmarte in Paris and then to find work as a waitress at a local bistro.
Both at her apartment and at the restaurant she finds ways to affect other people. She finds a lovely way to cheer up
the apartment concierge, Madeleine Wallace (Yolande Moreau), who is still pining for her wartime husband who had left her
20 years before. She finds delightful ways to torment the local grocer, Collignon (Urbain Canceleir), for his treatment of
his retarded, but kindhearted, employee, Bretodeau (Maurice Benichou).
And she brightens up the life of a brittle-boned, home-ridden artist, Joseph (Dominique Pinon), who spends each year of
his life painting another famous Renoir painting. This strange duck has a video camera pointed out his window at the display
clock of a jewelry store across the street so that his television set serves as his timepiece.
Amelie also works with an assortment of characters. An older mother hen type runs the restaurant and she is being haunted
by a former lover who sits in a booth all day long dictating commentary about her to his pocket recorder. Amelie works on
him to focus on the cigarette girl instead. Hipolito (Artus de Penguern), a writer wannabe, spends his days there as well
in spite of the ribbing he gets from the others who question his career choice given his lack of success. There are also many
others adding flavor to this cinematic broth.
You must realize the difficulty of expressing the originality of the
characters above and their interactions with each other as well as Amelie's interaction with them in mere words, and dry
words at that. Each person is so beautifully fleshed out in the movie that the proper words to describe them fail me here.
No matter how descriptive I get, I can't match their color in this wonderful movie.
One day Amelie takes the underground and notices a stranger lying on the floor in front of an instant photo booth scraping
something from beneath the booth. It turns out that he is a collector of the torn and discarded prints that customers of this
and many other booths throughout the subway system have left behind. Each photo tells a small story, and one stranger's picture
occurs beneath so many of these booths as to elicit even more curiosity than usual. Here is a small mystery in the making.
Amelie, like the rest of us, finds this guy more than a little weird until one day when she happens to come into possession
of his portfolio of mended photographs. Then she understands and begins to realize that he is an individual who is just as
oddball and quirky as she is.
She slowly begins to fall in love with this Nino Quincampoix (Mathieu Kassovitz), but how to meet him? Furthermore, why
would he, or anybody else, love her? Amelie just doesn't realize how precious and how lovable she is.
This final third of the movie is their love story, and it is an exceptionally beautiful and romantic one. The originality
of their introduction and Amelie's manipulation of the events to create even greater mystery and curiosity for Nino is a cinematic
romance for the ages.
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