Amelie

Amelie, also known as Le Amelie Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain is a French romantic comedy drama. It is about this sweet, innocent, shy and naïve girl, Amelie, acted by Audrey Tautou that went through a lonely childhood life. Amelie, as a young girl had wild imagination and it amuse me to see such creative thing like this particular scene where Amelie, when she was still a young girl, draw a picture of a face on her hand and moved it so that the face looks like its opening and closing its mouth. Later, as an adult, she worked as a waitress in Montmartre café. Her life changed when she found and returned a long-lost childhood treasure to a previous resident of her apartment. After observe the effect on how much it meant to the owner of the “treasure”, she made up her mind on helping people around her and make them happy. The irony of it is that she is sometimes “afraid” to look at her own life to see the loneliness she had within her. It is somehow amazing how she managed to see the little and small things in other people’s life that seems so insignificant to others yet it could mean a lot to that particular person.
This movie had a lot of narration in it. It started with the narration part where the narrator gave details on the exact day, time and place, description on the people, insects and things, and “At the same moment, a sperm with one X chromosome, belonging to Raphaël Poulain, made a dash for an egg in his wife Amandine. Nine months later, Amélie Poulain was born.” It is quite a funny way of starting a story. There were also parts in the movie where Amelie and the other characters such as Nino Quicampoix, acted by Mathieu Kassovitz looked directly into the camera and talked to it. In a way, it connects the person watching the movie to the character. There was a part where Amelie was in a cinema and she turned and looked into the camera saying that she likes to see other people’s expression when they watch a movie. The movie has a lot of animation in it that made the movie to be so unrealistic. There was a scene in the movie where Nino was talking to a photograph when he was on the bed. That is because the director of this movie, Jean-Pierre Jeunet was once an animation director. The director also did a good job in introducing the main character, in the beginning of the movie, there were at lest 10 minutes of showing the people associated with Amelie, who she likes and dislikes, the way she was brought up and her character build up from that strong foundation since the beginning of the movie. Quite a lot of Paris’s popular landscape was shown in the movie too. It is quite funny to see the expression of Amelie’s father’s face when he receives pictures of his gnome visiting places around Paris.
I believe Audrey Tauton did a good job in acting her character out as Amelie. The smile on her face, her expressions, it’s all still so clear in my mind. She made Amelie a unique character. She made the movie a one of its kind movie with the combination of the director’s good work and other things. Overall, this movie is worth watching.