Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I had planned to write about our favorite movies this month and then she took a blogging break and it was a break that I realized I needed to because I’ve been spreading myself way too thin lately.

Erin has mentioned the movie Amelie a few times in the last year or so as being one of her favorite movies so this past weekend I suggested that I watch it since she was already watching it with her hubby and that we write about it today.

She, of course, readily agreed.

Amelie, for those not familiar, is a French film – so yes, I had to read subtitles because I am not fluent in French. It is about a young waitress who was raised by introverted parents who thought she was sick as a child and kept her inside most of her life. It was released in 2001 and the full name of the movie in France is The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain. Audrey Tautuo plays Amelie. It is directed by Jean Pierre Jeunet.

When she grows up she is very imaginative and begins to work behind the scenes to improve the lives of others. In the process, she might even improve her own. She begins to help others to combat her own loneliness.

This is a very quirky film with quirky camera angles and quirky writing and acting. Quirky is not a bad term in my book, in case you are wondering. I am a fan of quirky.

What is quirky about the film?

The writing, the camera angles, as I mentioned above and in how the narrator talks in present tense for part of the movie and then Amelie breaks the third wall to talk to us about her life in just one scene and then it is back to the narrator. I love when movies break “the rules” so to speak and breaking the third wall is one of those ways. If you don’t know what breaking the third wall means, it is when a character looks directly at the camera and speaks to the audience.

The movie features beautiful, vintage scenery throughout. The backgrounds are picturesque in an urban art style and the entire movie has a slight yellow tone like vintage film to give it a warm feeling. The main colors in the film (green, yellow, and red) are inspired by the paintings of the Brazilian artist Juarez Machado, according to IMDb.

Stories weave in and out of the main narrative of Amelie’s life, starting with her search to find the owner of a small box of mementos she finds in the wall in her bathroom and continuing when she works to return a book of photos from photo booths around the city so she can meet the man who collects the photos.

Each story is a life that Amelie touches and improves and each time she feels more alive and less isolated. Each character she interacts with is also strange and a bit eccentric, and the camera angles exaggerate these facts and the intricacies of Amelie’s imagination. She works to improve the lives of everyone around her, including her father who she encourages to travel the world by sending him photographs of his gnome in different locations around the world.

Eventually, helping others will inspire her to bring happiness to her own life.

There is only one person whose life she sort of messes with as revenge, but he deserves it. Trust me. And harassing him helps to improve the life of another person so it sort of evens out.

According to a couple of sources online, Jeunet said he originally wrote the role of Amélie for the English actress Emily Watson.  Watson didn’t speak strong French, however, and then she started shooting Gosford Park instead. Jeunet then rewrote the screenplay for a French actress. The film was shot in Paris for the most part with some studio shots filmed in Germany.

Tautou was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Actress for her role. She was 24 when the film was released.

Trivia on IMbD states that graffiti and trash had to be cleared from shots in Paris to keep the film’s fantastical feeling. This was sometimes a difficult task for staff.

Amelie has a 90 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is a good thing if you don’t know. People love it, in other words. The movie was made into a musical on Broadway in 2015 and it was rereleased this year in theaters for Valentine’s Day. I have no idea if the musical was any good or not.

The movie is definitely fantastical – and a bit bizarre in places, to me, but not so bizarre that it’s creepy. More like whimsical bizarre. Not sure if that makes sense to some but it does in my brain.

One review I read of this on Rotten Tomatoes summed up some of my feelings about the movie: “I feel like it’s a beautiful love letter to the introverts out there with wonderfully magical imaginations who find it hard to connect to people in real life.”

This was a unique film that I don’t think I would have watched on my own, or discovered at all if it wasn’t for Erin’s suggestion. I will warn anyone offended by some sex and language, that this is a rated R movie. Neither is extreme but it still resulted in a R rating.

 I know Erin will have a lot more to share about it in her post, which you can find here: https://crackercrumblife.com/2024/02/15/february-favorites-movie-thoughts-amelie/

Have you ever seen Amelie? What was your impression of it?