If you look closely at the poster, first of all you will notice Amelie's eyes. This playful look with the cheeky grin, like the child who has stolen the candy from the jar, as if she has made a mischief, but one for the good of others.
Because this is Amelie: a young, innocent, playful, michievious girl who aims to change the lives of others. Jean-Pierre Jeunet directs Andrei Tautou in the film that made her famous and makes us all fall in love with the character.
Amelie is the only daughter of an eccentric couple, who does not know how to express their love for their little daughter. Due to their belief that the little one suffers from a heart problem, our heroine grows up isolated, which pushes her to develop her imagination and create her own dream worlds. She has her own sense of justice, which determines the rest of her behavior.
The adult Amelie continues to be dreamy and works as a waitress in a cafe, the 2 Moulins, surrounded by a cluster of people who each have their own story but also their own peculiarities. Due to an accidental event, our protagonist discovers a metal box with souvenirs from the childhood of the previous occupant of her apartment and so she begins to discover the owner in order to return it to him. That decision will change the life of the disappointed adult owner of the metal box and so Amelie makes the decision to help change the lives of others around her. But will she be able to change hers as well?
The film is a screenplay and visual masterpiece. Filled with intelligent findings, meaningful directorial interventions and bright colors that fill your eyes, Jeunet creates a microcosm to teach us a key message: What this world needs to change is kindness, justice and love.
And here comes Amelie, a revolutionary who wants to change the world, like any real revolutionary...but she starts with small steps, with actions not to harm, but to help the other. See the scene with the metal box with the memories that is returned to the adult owner. It changes the monotonous, sad life of a man with a small act of kindness and brings into it what he has lacked for so many years, the joy and innocence of the child.
It must be my guardian angel - source
And yet our heroine does not seek praise and fame. No, her own joys are in the small things: to put her hand in a bag of seeds, to break the creme brulee and other little things that, although they seem small, give great satisfaction to our daily lives (after all, who does not have these little pleasures?)
She brings couples together, makes unknown writers famous,
source
organizes a prank to persuade her dad to travel, helps an isolated artist to feel what he can not because of his health problems, "punishes" the rude greengrocer of her neighborhood with (not so) "innocent" practical jokes...
Amelie helps them all ... But what about our little Amelie who falls in love with the mysterious Nino, who collects photos from photo booths?
The film is deeply emotional. Jeunet is a master of storytelling and image, we know it from his previous films, Delicatessen and the City of the Lost Children.
[Pss! if you have not seen it is worth seeing as anything (Let me mention that Jeunet has also directed an Alien, perhaps the best IMO)].
The narrative does not remain only in the essence to understand the plot. It is interspersed with details that, although seemingly insignificant or irrelevant, are so familiar that in the end they are an important part of our history. (The hero of our first story who loves to peel the roasted chicken and eat it with his hands, feeds the grandson who reunited with him after a while in this way. It is these details that make us whole anyway).
Many objects comes to life in our scenes. The photographs, the paintings may not participate in the action but give us a comment on the narrative, a potential dialogue that we unconsciously participate in as these inanimate objects sometimes see more clearly than we do.
And the characters created by Jeunet are unique ... The jealous Joseph, the hypochondriac Georgette, Hippolito the writer, the "glass man"-artist Raphael, the slow but good-natured assistant of the greengrocer, the wicked and rude greengrocer, all who make up the little world of Amelie are made through the film the people next door. Have we not encountered such people and perhaps surpassed them?
Most importantly, everything unfolds in front of us wrapped in a wonderful music. Yann Tiersen made a dreamy soundtrack that fills our minds, our ears with beautiful melodies. Music that makes us dance mentally and in reality and takes us to the optimistic world of Amelie.
Let me make a spoiler. At the end of the movie, Amelie rides Nino on his moped. They smile all the time, they are in love, they are happy. They break the "fourth wall" and look us in the eyes as if to say: Dare to dream too, to show kindness, to live in your dream world.
And then you could be happy, too!
And we fall in love with this waltz of optimism, daring (sometimes) to make it true.
Thank you for reading!
