Rating- * * * * * (5/5)
Every year it seems there is one foreign language film that captures the hearts of American audiences. In 2000 it was Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and in 2001 it was definitely Amelie. It was universally praised by European audiences and won the audience awards at several film festivals, including Cannes, but critics were apprehensive about praising it because they felt it wasn’t serious enough. This is of course a completely ridiculous reason to criticize a movie since some of the best movies of all time are comedies: Some Like it Hot, American Beauty, and every movie by Buster Keaton, W.C. Fields, and the Marx Brothers. On the surface, Amelie is a sweet love story about a Parisian girl who spreads love to everyone but cannot find any for herself. The story and characters are charming but the real allure of the movie comes from the fantastically unique style. The story moves quickly through the background of the main heroine with a fantastic narration accompanying some almost surreal visuals. Amelie’s father was a doctor who never touched his daughter except to give her an annual checkup. She was so excited by the contact with her father that her heart began to race leading her father to believe that she had a bad heart. Thus, her parents never let her play outside or travel and Amelie was forced to use her imagination for entertainment. When Amelie was about 10 years old, her mother was killed by a suicide jumper who just happened to land on her. These bizarre little details don’t matter to the plot but they enhance the story so much because you are thrown all these incredible details in such a short amount of time, you begin to feel like you are watching a fantasy movie. Once the introduction is out of the way, we watch as a strange chain of events unfold starting with the death of Princess Dianna and eventually leading to Amelie discovering a treasure box left by someone thirty years prior. She sets out to find the owner and return his treasures to him and it makes her so happy that she decides to go all around Paris doing good deeds for people. Eventually, she meets a young man who collects thrown away pictures from those photo booths you see in malls and movie theaters. She falls in love with the man but is so obsessed with making their meeting an accident that she can’t ever seem to face him. The story progresses with such visual inventiveness that you can’t help but be drawn into this world, this artificially beautiful and provincial Paris (“Paris as it never was” as the director says). One of my favorite shots in the movie comes when Amelie is constructing a letter for her depressed landlady so it will appear that it came from her late husband. It is difficult to describe the shot but it starts with Amelie holding up a piece of paper and some scissors, then the camera zooms in accompanied by a kind of whirring sound. She then holds up the finished product as if she were doing an infomercial for the process. It is little amusing touches like this that make this movie so engaging and fun to watch and American directors could take a cue from the inventiveness and creativity of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. I would highly recommend this movie to fans of cute love stories but also to anyone who is a lover of good cinematography, stylish comedy, and visual innovation. This is definitely one of the best movies of the year and the DVD has plenty of great extras so go out and rent it.