Other Titles • Amelie from Montmartre • Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain • Amélie • Amelie of Montmartre (2001) • The Fabulous Destiny of Amelie Poulain (2001)
Synopses for Amelie from Montmartre (2001)
1.
Perhaps the most charming movie of all time, Amélie is certainly one of the top 10. The title character (the bashful and impish Audrey Tautou) is a single waitress who decides to help other lonely people fix their lives. Her widowed father yearns to travel but won't, so to inspire the old man she sends his garden gnome on a tour of the world; with whispered gossip, she brings together two cranky regulars at her café; she reverses the doorknobs and reprograms the speed dial of a grocer who's mean to his assistant. Gradually she realizes her own life needs fixing, and a chance meeting leads to her most elaborate stratagem of all. This is a deeply wonderful movie, an illuminating mix of magic and pragmatism. Fans of the director's previous films (Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children) will not be disappointed; newcomers will be delighted. --Bret Fetzer
(15 votes)
2.
Amélie Poulain (Audrey Tautou) is a young woman who glides through the streets of Paris as quietly as a mouse. With wide eyes and a tiny grin, she sees the world in a magical light, discovering minor miracles every day. A shy and reserved person whose favorite moments are spent alone skimming stones into the water, Amélie was raised by a pair of eccentrics who falsely diagnosed her with a heart problem at the age of six and so limited her exposure to the outside world. Now a free and independent woman, Amélie wears a bob that curls in every direction and dresses in red. With a job in a café and an aptitude for spying on her neighbors, Amélie entertains herself by enacting a series of homemade, kindhearted practical jokes. She returns a long-forgotten box of childhood knickknacks to its proper owner, she sends her father's garden troll on a trip around the world, and she creates a love connection at the café between the hypochondriac druggist and a beer-drinking old grouch. But when the day is done, Amélie finds one stone unturned, and decides to work her magic on the quirky object of her affections, Nino Quincampoix (Matthieu Kassovitz), whom she has never met.
Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (who codirected DELICATESSEN and THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN with Marc Caro) presents AMÉLIE, an aesthetically gorgeous and inventive film. The rich, glowing color scheme is offset by flashbacks in black and white archival footage that give short biographies of each character. A soft-spoken narrator guides viewers through this enlightening fairy tale, which sometimes speeds through the streets and other times drifts in slow motion. AMÉLIE is humorous, questioning, and strange, and it will change the lives of all who watch it, if only for a short while after leaving Amélie's world.
(15 votes)
3.
She'll Change Your Life.
Nominated for 5 Academy Awards® including Best Original Screenplay, this magical comedy met overwhelming acclaim nationwide! A painfully shy waitress working at a Paris café, Amelie makes a surprising discovery and sees her life drastically changed for the better! From then on, Amelie dedicates herself to helping others find happiness… in the most delightfully unexpected ways! But will she have the courage to do for herself what she has done for others?
(15 votes)
4.
With its use of special effects to express the main character's internal emotions, Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amelie could have been mistaken for a French version of Ally McBeal; however, unlike Ally--"woe is me for I cannot find a man"--McBeal, Amelie is not distressed by the lack of men in her life, in fact the whole idea of sex seems to amuse her no end. Basic pleasures such as cracking the top of a Crème Brule offer her all the sensual satisfaction she needs and her existence in the "Paris of Dreams" is the stuff of fairy tales. Indeed, this cinematic treat must have worked wonders for the Paris tourist board: Jeunet's beautiful interpretation of Parisian life is depicted in all the vibrant colours you would expect from the director of Delicatessen.
On the DVD:Amelie has received an additional disc for this special edition release. Disc 1 is the same as the original single-disc release, with a choice of DTS or Dolby 5.1 sound and an 16.9 anamorphic widescreen picture with optional director's commentary. The second disc contains the new special features and, just like original disc, a lot of thought has gone into the access menu with its lavish graphics offering the choice of entering the Café, the Canal or the Station. Yet the most exciting extra in name--"Audrey Tautou's funny face"--is simply a series of out-takes which does little more than allow you to warm to Tautou as a person. The home movie includes the transformation of Tautou into Amelie and the creation of the "photo-booth album". There are also interesting interviews with Jeunet and the cast and crew, and a nice little section themed around the gnome and his travels. Along with this is a storyboard-to-screen exposition, behind-the-scenes pictures, scene tests, teasers and trailers. All in all a decent enough package, but hardly warranting the special edition label. It's hard not to wonder why Momentum didn't offer this set two months earlier. --Nikki Disney
(15 votes)
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