Amelie review

Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (2001), directed by the auteur influenced Jean-Pierre Jeunet who has made a huge impact to French influenced films such as Delicatessen & City of Lost Children. Jeunet illustrates the setting of Amelie in Montmartre, Paris where he grew up. Montmartre was home to some of the greatest artists such as Pablo Picasso & Vincent Van Gogh. Amelie is physically no longer a child but the attitude she displays resembles how she doesn’t want to step into the adult world and her mentality is still set on childhood. Jeunet was an animator before a director so the sense of innocence and happiness occurs more than the usual film. The fact that there are varied pace in the film, there are childish filters of colours to influence happiness and that there are parts where we hear Amelie’s thoughts immediately creates the Cinema Du Look style of things and how Jeunet is unique in comparison to many other directors. Amelie is an idealised version of reality; even the music suggests to the viewer it will lack the gritty nature of life. Amelie includes important characters which come across as “outsiders” such as Dufayel, Collignon, Madeleine, Nino, Gina, Suzanne, Georgette, Joseph, Hopolito, Philomene & Lucien. Every character has a sense of happiness and childhood in them. For instance Dufayel exemplifies his happiness when Amelie spots the girl in his paintings and Amelie uses the girl as a metaphor for her own happiness. Nino is the main source of Amelie’s happiness, even with doing the good deeds she still has moments of sadness when she begins to daydream. Once they are together the audience assumes that Amelie will live in the present rather than the past or future. Amelie prefers mediated communication because she uses videotapes to capture important moments for Dufayel, she uses directions and clues as to where she is hiding Nino’s bag in Montmartre, and when she conceals her identity from Nino with the similarity of Zorro’s uniform (including the mask, cloak and hat). Simplicity is clearly demonstrated through the repetition of routines for example Amelie visits her father Rafael Poulain every weekend. Amelie starts off her journey on the worst foot when her mother Amandine Poulain commits suicide and her father Raphael refuses to go on holiday, but then she meets Nino and everything turns into a fairytale. In comparison to fairy tales, Amelie resembles Olive Oyle in the Abbesses from Alice in the Wonderland.