Amélie - with many spoilers

Amélie is a comedy and a romance about an oddball exploring the streets of Paris. Originally titled Emily, the director had intended to cast Emily Watson as the lead actress but was not convinced by her faux French accent. Audrey Tautou was cast allegedly after he had stumbled over an image of her on a movie poster. The movie was also released under the title; Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain in France.

Verdict

My movie ratings consist of thumbs up or middle fingers as sometimes one starring something doesn’t shame it enough. 5 thumbs up = an absolute triumph. 5 middle fingers = a complete piece of shit, go fuck yourself.

Amélie - 4 thumbs up

The feel-good factor is enormous and the characters are charmingly odd.

Favourite quote “Blubber’s suicide attempts destroy Mother’s nerves” - The narrator explains why Amelie’s pet fish was dumped in a stream.

Similarly entertaining quotes are: “I’m nobody’s little Weasel” - Amélie ponders her loneliness after the jilted landlady explains how her former husband left her.

“The cat likes overhearing children’s stories” - The narrator gives a lot of detail about the citizens of Paris. Even the ones with whiskers.

Favourite scene

The scene where Amélie’s love interest follows clues she has left for him, leading him to discover the mystery man from the passport photos. The man referred to as a ”ghost” who Amélie believes may have died and left his image all over Paris in order to be remembered was actually just a technician testing the booths were operational. This caught me off guard. I was sucked into the fantasy too so when his occupation was revealed I laughed and felt like a prick.

There is also a very amusing scene where Amélie’s landlady explains that her dead dog misses her dead ex-husband so much that he can’t stop staring at his picture. The camera then pans to a stuffed black labrador facing a framed portrait. Genius.

Best meme from the movie

Analysis

That was the most French thing I’ve ever seen. But it was fake. This was Disney’s take on Paris. This was someone looking back on a caricature of France they once saw on a postcard in a faux French gift shop in Disneyland with rose tinted glasses. It wouldn’t surprise me if the tourist board had had a hand in the production of this picture because it was all the cliches that don’t actually exist… but it was a great movie. I have visited Paris twice in the last two years and absolutely hated the place. There are some nice buildings around, sure, and the hideous subterranean skull maze is a lot of fun but besides that the place is a shit hole. Noone likes the scaffolding you ripped off the Blackpool tower with and the painting of the miserable lady is not worth the queues. The place is so disappointing that some people require counselling after their first visit. Don't believe me? Check out Paris Syndrome

Amélie’s Paris is colourful, charming and adorable. The exact place I turn to films to hide inside. Perhaps this is Paris through Amélie’s naive wide eyes, if so she’s in for a shock and I would half expect a sequel to feature her half beaten up and on the game.

Something beautiful that is touched upon is the diverse and weird phenomenon that is human life. All buzzing around with their different interests and trying to achieve different goals for different reasons. This was really heart warming to watch, made a great film and I cannot pretend it didn’t make me want to go outside and explore Birmingham in the same way, to everyone’s disgust during the current epidemic. The fact of the matter is, the characters in this movie are exaggerations of the tiny percentage of people who are remotely active or interesting. A truer to life account would show everyone sat at home watching Netflix or scrolling through social media apps.

The main gal, Amélie is a shy and socially awkward recluse who empathizes with the underdogs in society; the fruit trader’s sidekick, the neighbour with the glass bones (who looks like a French Bill Nighy) and eventually her freak of a love interest. This band of strays reminds me of my own oddball cast of friends and how unusual and mentally unsound we are as a group. We are not simply thrown into a situation of witnessing Amélie and trying to make sense of her, however. We are talked through the events that defined her by some very quirky narration garnished with a pinch of fourth wall breaking. It is very understandable that she turned out a bit strange. Someone suicided onto her Mother.

There is some very clever imagery used at various points that I feel may have gone unnoticed. The man who received his lost toys from 40 years ago in a random phone box (which was creepy as hell) has a flashback later on in the movie of him losing his marbles -obviously like the saying. Another instance is the tense lady who works at the cigarette counter in the coffee shop having a screaming orgasm in the toilets, swiftly followed by Amélie letting off steam from the coffee machine to try and mask the noise.

Aside from all of this there is an obvious theme of things spending a lot of time lost before eventually being discovered, which mirrors Amélie’s life. She spent a lot of time hidden away being home-schooled and generally not being noticed. This most obvious example of this is the post that went missing for 30 years, only to turn up on an island somewhere, as well as the man’s tin box of childhood toys.

The bottom line

Liam Kerry was a man writing reviews for a film blog.

Liam Dislikes the Eiffel tower.

He dislikes having to spend any time in Paris at all.

He likes his oddball cast of friends

He likes Amélie

shit.