Amelie review

“Failure teaches us that life is but a draft, a long rehearsal for a show that will never play.”   

Yesterday, I found myself scrolling through a list of movies I swore to watch but never did. In that very long list (I’m not proud of myself), I found Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “Amelie”. I wish I could describe the feeling this movie has given me. Try to imagine a ray of light touching your hand. It’s warm and it feels somehow familiar. That’s how watching “Amelie” feels like. Throughout this movie you laugh, maybe cringe for a little bit. But in the end, you smile.   

 The movie has a striking visual style. It has a very specific colour palette. It’s a very warm movie, filled with greens and reeds. The scenes are very well lit and there are no scenes with complete darkness. Also... Jeunet seems to love wide-angle lenses and putting the characters very close to the camera. The actors’ features are very distorted but this fine touch adds to the film’s charm. The camera is usually above or below eye level. Because of this, and the wide-angle lenses, the scenes seem more dramatic and have a bigger impact on the viewer. And, yes... the camera moves a lot. Jeunet has said that he avoids using steadicams because it’s much more difficult for him to keep the strict consistency he’s looking for.  

Jeunet takes a lot of risks with this movie. It’s incredibly complicated to make a charming comedy that takes place in a not quite realistic Paris without making it feel forced. Amelie grows up alone, only with her father, constantly starving for attention. She’s working as a waitress and lives a lonely life, never quite satisfied. Everything changes when she drops a bottle cap while watching the news about Princess Diana’s death. The cap touches a stone in the wall of her flat and opens a hole in the wall. There, she discovers an old box which contained things a little boy hoarded a long-time ago. After she finds the owner of the box and sees how happy her gesture made him, she finally knows what she wants to do with her life. She wants to make people happy while amusing herself (and the viewer). She devises the most intriguing stratagems for making people happy. Along the way, she meets Nino, a man who collects unwanted pictures from automated photo booths and is possibly Amelie’s soulmate. She is too shy to speak with him face to face, so she finds lots of clever ways to communicate with him and show him how she really feels. Just like Amelie, Nino is used to being in the background, but after acknowledging how much he meant for her, he wonders if he’s blessed or just stalked.   

Amelie is a movie you can’t forget. It’s so hard to make such a heart-warming movie without being a cliché or straight up annoying. Amelie makes you laugh and wonder “What am I doing?”. It’s a light-hearted drama that allows you to enjoy the absurd comedy and immerse in the story. Amelie allows you to think about all the good things you can do. Amelie allows you to smile unapologetically.