Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "AMELIE"

Sucks that the theater's equipment went screwey on you. That hasn't happened to me in a long time (knock on Ed Wood).

That's interesting, about finding the camera moves repetitive and detracting a bit from your experience. I'll pay attention to them next time I see the film (only seen it twice thus far), but I didn't find them at all obtrusive or annoying in the slightest. And I would say that pronounced camera moves are certainly part of his already established style. But I'll be able to address the dolly zooms more specifically after I consciously watch for them next viewing. Subconsciously what my mind's eye remembers is that they either introduce characters in narration or punctuate those small but momentous moments when Fate hits, which is of course the main theme of the film.



Don't know how much of a *spoiler* is really necessary for this next part, since it is featured prominently in the trailer, but...as for the bit where Amélie is literally reduced to a puddle when Nino leaves the Two Windmills Cafe, I thought it was perfectly achieved and I didn't find it at all incongrous, either with the overall tone or the rest of the visual effects elsewhere in the picture.


Anyway, glad you enjoyed Amélie, other than those few particulars. For me personally, there isn't one false note or moment in the entire flick. I think it's absolutely perfect.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Had to search hard for a fault in Amelie but there was one scene which didn't really work for me.

It was when Dufayel and Lucien were together painting. Lucien won't stop talking so Dufayel yells at him to get out. I didn't really get this scene to be perfectly honest. Dufayel wasn't the most sympathetic character anyway so it dehumanised him to the audience even further when he attacked Lucien. Lucien was like a lost puppy. You couldn't feel anything but love for the guy.

A couple of you guys have seen it. Any different interpretations of the scene?

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I couldn't believe that she knew my name. Some of my best friends didn't know my name.

*SPOILERS*


Dufayel has spent many years locked away in self-imposed isolation from the rest of the world. As such, he doesn't have the best social skills anymore and can't really relate to others properly.

Yes, he likes Lucien and tries to help him and to treat him like the human being his boss, Collignon, certainly does not. So he does little verbal exercises with him, to teach him to speak in clever rhymes of derision. And of course he encourages him to express himself through painting.

However, while his intentions are good and pure because of that prolonged isolation he has no real patience for these activities either. When Lucian gets overly-excited by the impromptu insult poetry, Dufayel screams at him to shut up and leave. When Lucian keeps chattering away, pleasantly or not, while Dufayel is trying to lose himself in painting, he again screams and makes him leave.Dufayel gets more upset during the incident when they are painting because clearly it is the one and only escape he has from the exile of that apartment, and with his enthusiasm Lucian is inadvertently ruining that seemingly small but singular and all-important pleasure. It doesn't matter that Lucian is innocent and does not mean any harm, the initial reaction of rage is about having his peace and what may be his only reason for getting up in the morning destroyed.



The greater effect this all has on Dufayel (coupled with his not being able to capture the girl's face in the painting, a girl of course he has come to identify as Amelie) is it finally makes him become proactive in helping Amelie see that if she doesn't go after her dreams while she still can, one day she'll be stuck in her own isolation like him and trapped unable to relate to anyone or anything real. Just like him.

The irritations with Lucian help Dufayel see what he has become after all these years. He realizes that painting isn't an escape at all, that he is still a lonely and sad person. He feels Amelie's hobby of happily meddling with people's lives will become similarly hollow over time. Just as he gets frustrated in not being able to control even the one painting because of a couple expressions he can't master or getting irrationally irritated at Lucian's ramblings, so will Amelie eventually become frustrated when her little schemes don't work out exactly the way she envisions. That's what those bouts of depression when Amelie fantasizes seeing herself on TV at night are all about, showing that being an anonymous angel is not as fulfilling as she hoped it would be. Until she allows herself to be in love and escape her little self-imposed prisons none of the rest will matter much. By the end of the picture Dufayel knows he must save Amelie from that fate, a fate he knows all to well.


That's my take on it anyway. Like I said, I've only seen it twice. Your mileage may vary.

Perfectly explained.

Thanks a lot Holden.

You've somehow made Amelie look even better than it was.

like the visual!!!!!!!

Hey, Amelie is already up to $8-million in U.S. grosses! Pretty impressive considering it's still on only a couple hundred screens nationwide. It's per-screen average has been the highest this week, now that Harry Potter has died down a bit.

Continued success, sweet Amelie.

Amelie! C'est magnifique!

I knew I had to see this film when I heard about it on NPR, but I wish they hadn't given away as much of the plot as they did. I prefer to know absolutely nothing about a film before I see it. For me, much of the magic is in seeing the story unfold. Still, it was a delight to experience this movie.

I highly doubt that box office will come anywhere near 'Crouching Tiger...', even though it is a far superior film. Action equals box office in this country, unfortunately.

All of this DC talk has me nostalgic for the 5 years that I lived in the northern Virginia area. Many a weekend would find us making the trek to Dupont Circle and Georgetown to take in non-megaplex pictures. I've heard that the Key theater is no longer, is that true?

I left No. Va. for the cultural wasteland of Phoenix, Az. There I spent 3 years waiting for foreign and independent films to hit video release, a sufficient but pale alternative to theater viewing. I have since moved to Dallas, which I am pleasantly surprised to find hosts a variety of theaters that run foreign and indies. There is a new Angelika Film Center, and a Landmark theater (the Inwood.) Who would have thought?

I am going to sing Amelie's praises to everyone I know, as this film has something for every type of movie lover.

R

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You get me slapped with a fine, you argue with the customers and I have to patch everything up, you get us thrown out of a funeral by violating the corpse, and then to top it off, you ruin my relationship. I mean, what's your encore? Do you, like, anally rape my mother while pouring sugar in my gas tank?

The Key Theatre in Georgetown did indeed close two or three years ago. Too bad. Teeny-tiny screens, but they had the best movies in town. Saw lots of great stuff there over the years: foreign, independents, reissues.

Glad you loved Amelie so much. I've seen it three times now and have to go back for more.

I went to see this today and it was simply beautiful. It was witty, heartfelt, thoughtful, romantic, funny, and just a complete pleasure to watch. I didn't know anything about the movie going in so I was kind off put off to see the subtitles but that didn't last long and it may have actually made the film more alluring in some weird way. It's just a beautiful, beautiful movie. I hope to see it again sometime.

I kept meaning to mention...

Last weekend at the European Film Awards, Amelie won for Best Picture, Best Director (Jean-Pierre Jeunet) and Best Cinematography (Bruno Delbonnel).

I read that Holden. But Audrey Tautou? No best actress.

Have you seen that piano teacher movie? That actress must be something special to have beaten out Amelie!

I usually watch the Euro Film Awards but they weren't on this year. I remembering watching it the year Life Is Beautiful won the best film award. It showed the clip where he translates the German soldier's orders into French and I was blown away, that was when I knew I had to see that film.

Yeah, Audrey Tautou was the other nomination Amelie received (not nearly as many categories as The Oscars), but she lost out to Isabelle Huppert in The Piano Teacher. I haven't seen that movie yet but earlier this year it did very well at Cannes where Huppert also won as Best Actress.

Huppert, who is also from France, has been around since the '70s. English-speakers may know her from the couple American films she's appeared in: Michael Cimino's notorious epic flop Heaven's Gate (1980) and the would-be Hitchcockian thriller The Bedroom Window (1987) starring Steve Guttenberg & Elizabeth McGovern. Her best performances that I've seen are in The Story of Women (1988) and Madame Bovary (1991). The only other of this year's nominated actress performances I've seen yet was Charlotte Rampling in Under the Sand, which I liked very much.Especially her performance.


BTW, Ben Kingsley won as Best Actor for his knock-out performance in Sexy Beast.

i loved this movie, this should have been nominated for best picture. I thought it was hilarious, espically loved the scenes where she would turn into water or zorro. And when she went in to the guys house and changed everything around. SEE THIS MOVIE i have never seen the forums love a movie so much.

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"Who comes at 12:00 on a Sunday night to rent Butch Cassady and the Sundance Kid?"
-Hollywood Video rental guy to me

Whether or not Amelie "should have been" nominated for Best Picture is something we'll find out if we have to debate and bemoan this coming February - it's elligible for this coming year's awards (handed out in March of 2002), not last year's.

I am completely in love with this film. It's one of those movies that makes you feel so good when you leave the theater. If you haven't been blesed by it, yet...hurry up and go...it won't be around much longer. My theater has it on an extended run.

So.

Not only was it not nominated for Best Picture, it also didn't win Best Foreign Language film.

What's the deal there?

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Yeah. I'm asking myself the same question. I just saw it last night, post-Oscar; but now that I've seen it, I'm very disappointed.
It's an honor to even be nominated...but this movie deserves major recognition. Nothing has come along with Amelie's energy, style, charactor, and wit, for a long time. I'm very surprised that the Academy, basically, overlooked it.

I know.

It's almost impossible to believe that an organization that has given it's top prize to the likes of frippin' Gladiator would overlook a movie like Amelie, yet SOMEhow it happened.

I walked out of Gladiator and didn't say anything but," Where should we go for pizza?"

I walked out of Amelie and had to stop myself from running back in to demand I get to see it again. It's a shame it didn't get anything...Gosford Park got best screenplay? Amelie was jacked! I've seen the likes of Gosford Park before, but nothing, I mean nothing quite the likes of Amelie.

Isn't a magnificent movie-going experience from a superbly-crafted piece of originality its own reward?

The Academy rarely recognizes orignality. They pay it lipservice, but year after year they reward the same old crap.

The screenplay awards used to go as a sort of consolation prize to those more original films they didn't have the guts to honor with Best Picture nominations/awards. But in recent years they've taken to snubbing those movies even in the screenplay categories. Past winners included Fargo, The Usual Suspects, Sling Blade, L.A. Confidential, Pulp Fiction, and Thelma & Louise. But in the last few years, Being John Malkovich, Election, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Memento, The Royal Tenenbaums, Ghost World and Amelie have been nominated but lost to the likes of The Cider House Rules and A Beautiful Mind. Now that's not right. But, alas, it is the A.M.P.A.S.