Plot
Amelie, an innocent and naive girl in Paris, with her own sense of justice, decides to help those around her and along the way, discovers love.
Release Year: 2001
Rating: 8.5/10 (251,959 voted)
Critic's Score: 69/100
Director:
Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Stars: Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Rufus
Storyline Amélie is a story about a girl named Amélie whose childhood was suppressed by her Father's mistaken concerns of a heart defect. With these concerns Amélie gets hardly any real life contact with other people. This leads Amélie to resort to her own fantastical world and dreams of love and beauty. She later on becomes a young woman and moves to the central part of Paris as a waitress. After finding a lost treasure belonging to the former occupant of her apartment, she decides to return it to him. After seeing his reaction and his new found perspective - she decides to devote her life to the people around her. Such as, her father who is obsessed with his garden-gnome, a failed writer, a hypochondriac, a man who stalks his ex girlfriends, the "ghost", a suppressed young soul, the love of her life and a man whose bones are as brittle as glass. But after consuming herself with these escapades...
Writers: Guillaume Laurant, Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Cast: Audrey Tautou
-
Amélie Poulain
Mathieu Kassovitz
-
Nino Quincampoix
Rufus
-
Raphaël Poulain
Lorella Cravotta
-
Amandine Poulain
Serge Merlin
-
Raymond Dufayel
Jamel Debbouze
-
Lucien
Clotilde Mollet
-
Gina
Claire Maurier
-
Madame Suzanne - la patronne du café
Isabelle Nanty
-
Georgette
Dominique Pinon
-
Joseph
Artus de Penguern
-
Hipolito
Yolande Moreau
-
Madeleine Wallace
Urbain Cancelier
-
Collignon
Maurice Bénichou
-
Dominique Bretodeau
Michel Robin
-
Mr. Collignon
Filming Locations: Abbesses, Paris 18, Paris, France
Box Office Details
Budget: FRF 77,000,000
(estimated)
Opening Weekend: £559,747
(UK)
(7 October 2001)
(82 Screens)
Gross: $33,201,661
(USA)
(30 June 2002)
Technical Specs
Runtime:|
France:
Did You Know?
Trivia:
When Amélie goes to Mr Collignon's parents, the father, who makes holes in flowers, says he'd rather make these holes into lilacs. This is a direct reference to French singer Serge Gainsbourg's song "Le poinçonneur des Lilas".
Goofs:
Revealing mistakes:
The first time Joseph is talking to Georgette at her cigarette stand, parts of her dress are blue, and other parts are color corrected to that sepia effect applied to most of the rest of the scene.
Quotes:
[first lines]
Narrator:
On September 3rd 1973, at 6:28pm and 32 seconds, a bluebottle fly capable of 14,670 wing beats a minute landed on Rue St Vincent, Montmartre. At the same moment, on a restaurant terrace nearby, the wind magically made two glasses dance unseen on a tablecloth...
User Review
She makes ME fall in love too!
Rating: 10/10
To start off with, I heard a lot of good things about this movie when it
was
on the big screens but never got around to see it before it disappeared.
Sitting here, long after in the aftermath, I might never forgive myself
for
missing that opportunity. Eventually I did get around to see it, though a
small TV never does a film the same justice a theater does, and being a
bit
sceptic about the small hype this movie caused made me prejudice about it,
but I must say I have never been so wrong before. And I am happy saying
it.
This movies biggest crime, and yet its biggest asset, is that it is in
French. Subtitles just does not bring full justice to a movie like this,
and
it is bound to scare off most of the audience not used to subtitled
movies.
Sad to say so, but I believe it is the truth. I do not know any French at
all, but I sure wish I was fluent watching this movie!
Compared to most other films "Amelie" (and I will stick to "Amelie" since
"Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain" is a bit long to write) is based on
a
rather ordinary and plain story everyone can relate to, but it is given to
us in a very special kind of way, mixed with wonderful little subplots and
an almost chaotic amount of details. We get to see and experience the
world
and especially Paris through the filtering eyes and fantasy of Amelie, A
Paris that might feel small and limited on the screen but in fact is just
as
big as it is in the eyes of Amelie.
Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet brings to life the world of Amelie with
colors,
masterful camerawork and a few special effects (Well, I have certainly
felt
like melting a couple of times too in my life!). Some people I spoke to
before seeing "Amelie" criticized it for being too childish and
unrealistic,
but I believe it is an essential part of the movie since Amelie herself is
a
very childish and imaginative young girl. She just happens to fall in love
one day when she decides to embark on a quest. Jean-Pierre Jeunet manages
to
bring us along without losing control of the set or the plot. It is
exactly
this kind of movie that could easily be overdone and lose all of its magic
in the hands of the wrong person, but Jean-Pierre Jeunet never slips a
single time. For you who think you never heard of him before he is
actually
the same man who brought us "Alien 4" back in 1997, (I still refuse to
believe he was involved in that horrible film...), and the wonderful
"Delicatessen" in 1991.
Audrey Tautou could not be overemphasized for her importance in portraying
Amelie. I am a bit embarrassed admitting it but I was almost falling in
love
with Amelie myself, forgetting she was only fiction on the screen. However
she does not carry "Amelie" solely by herself. The cast makes an excellent
whole and it is hard imagining switching anyone without affecting the
whole
outcome. Everyone manages to make the most out of their role and even
though
we only get to know some of them briefly they come alive just as much as
Amelie herself does.
I could go on forever about "Amelie". It contains so many details and
switches in tempo and camerawork it has to be seen more than once to take
in
and understand everything. Damn it, "Amelie" made me happy, laughing out
loud at times, and very few movies affects me like that.
I very rarely give movies a 10, and I was indeed considering a 9 for a
while, but for me this is one of those movies I will come back to time
after
time. Long after the CG thrills of hyped fantasy movies and big budget
Hollywood productions have faded and been forgotten, Amelie will still be
jumping around in my heart, doing all those silly and charming little
things
I wish I dared to do too...
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