Amélie

Amélie is a 2001 French film directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and starring Audrey Tautou. Its original French title is Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain ("The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain"; poulain is French for foal). Written by Jeunet with Guillaume Laurant, the film is a whimsical and somewhat idealised depiction of contemporary Parisian life, set in Montmartre. It tells the story of a painfully shy waitress who decides to change the lives of those around her for the better, while struggling with her own isolation.

Amélie won best film at the European Film Awards; it won four César Awards (including Best Film and Best Director), two BAFTA Awards (including Best Original Screenplay), and was nominated for five Academy Awards. (See below for other awards and recognition.)





Plot
Amélie is the story of Amélie Poulain, a girl who grows up isolated from other children. Raphaël, her taciturn, antisocial ex-Army doctor father, mistakenly believes that she suffers from a heart condition (a mistake, in fact, resulting from the increase in her heartbeat caused by the rare thrill of physical contact by her father, who only ever touches her during medical check-ups). Her mother Amandine, a neurotic schoolteacher with shaky nerves, sees to Amélie's education. Amandine dies when Amélie is young, the victim of a freak accident involving a suicidal Québécois woman who throws herself off the top of Notre Dame Cathedral and lands on Amélie's mother. Raphaël withdraws even further as a result, and devotes his life to building a rather eccentric shrine in the garden in Amandine's memory, which houses her ashes. Left to amuse herself, Amélie develops an unusually active imagination.

When she grows up, Amélie becomes a waitress in a small Montmartre café, The Two Windmills, run by a former circus performer. The café is staffed and frequented by a gang of eccentrics. By age 22, life for Amélie is simple; having spurned romantic relationships following a few failed efforts, she has devoted herself to simple pleasures, such as cracking crème brûlée with a teaspoon, going for walks in the Paris sunshine, skipping stones across St. Martin's Canal, trying to guess how many couples in Paris are having an orgasm at one moment ("Fifteen!", she informs the camera), and letting her imagination roam free.


L'épicerie of Monsieur Collignon, Rue des Trois Frères, Paris, used as a film location.Her life begins to change on the day that Princess Diana dies. After hearing the news of her death on television, Amelie drops her perfume bottle cap, knocking loose a bathroom wall tile. Behind the loose tile she finds an old metal box of childhood memorabilia hidden by a boy who lived in her apartment decades ago. Fascinated by the find, she resolves to track down the now-grown man who put it there and return it to him, making a deal with herself in the process: if she finds him and it makes him happy, she will devote her life to bringing happiness to others.

She meets her reclusive neighbour, Raymond Dufayel, a painter who continually repaints Luncheon of the Boating Party (Le Déjeuner des canotiers) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He is known as 'the Glass Man' because of his brittle bone condition. With his help, she tracks the former occupant down, and places the box in a phone booth, ringing the number as he passes to lure him there. Upon opening the box, the man, moved to tears, has an epiphany as long-forgotten childhood memories come flooding back. She trails him to a nearby bar and observes him secretly. On seeing the positive effect she had on him, she resolves from that moment on to do good in the lives of others.


Amélie (Tautou), her father Raphaël (Rufus), and the travelling garden gnome.Amélie becomes a secret matchmaker and guardian angel, executing complex but hidden schemes impacting the lives of those around her with subtle, arm's-length manipulation, leading to several sub plots and episodes. She escorts a blind man to the Metro station, giving him a rich description of the street scenes he passes. She persuades her father to follow his dream of touring the world by stealing his garden gnome and having an air-hostess friend send pictures of it from all over the world. She matches a co-worker with one of the customers in the bar. She convinces the unhappy concierge of her building that the husband who abandoned her had in fact sent her a final love letter just before his death. She supports Lucien, the young man who works for Mr. Collignon, the bullying owner of the neighbourhood green grocer. By playing practical jokes on Collignon she undermines his confidence until he questions his own sanity.

However, while she is looking after others, Mr Dufayel is observing her and begins a conversation with her about his painting. He has repeatedly painted the same piece because he cannot quite capture the excluded look of the girl drinking a glass of water. They repeatedly discuss the meaning of this character and although it is never explicitly said, she comes to represent Amélie and her lonely life. Through their discussions Amélie is forced to examine her own life and her attraction to a stranger, a quirky young man who collects the discarded photographs of strangers from passport photo booths, with whom she has never spoken. She begins to observe him from a distance and is on the scene to pick up his photo album when he drops it in the street. She discovers his name is Nino Quincampoix, and she plays a cat and mouse game with him around Paris before eventually anonymously returning his treasured album; however, she is too shy to actually approach him, and almost loses hope when, having finally attempted to orchestrate a proper meeting, she misinterprets events when he enters into a conversation with one of her co-workers. It takes Raymond Dufayel's insightful friendship to give her the courage to overcome her shyness and finally meet with Nino, and the two begin a relationship.


Cast

The Two Windmills cafe in Montmartre, used as a film locationAudrey 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 - Suzanne
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
Andrée Damant - Mrs. Collignon
Claude Perron - Eva, Nino's colleague
Armelle - Philomène, air hostess
Ticky Holgado - Man in photo
Kevin Fernandes - Bretodeau, as a child
Flora Guiet - Amélie, 6 years old
Amaury Babault - Nino, as a child
André Dussollier - Narrator

Le déjeuner des canotiers by French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The girl drinking the glass of water in the centre of the picture comes to represent Amélie

Production


In his commentary on the DVD edition, Jeunet explains that he originally wrote the role of Amélie for the British actress Emily Watson; in the original draft, Amélie's father was an Englishman living in London. However, Watson's French was not strong, and when she became unavailable to shoot the film, owing to a conflict with the filming of Gosford Park, Jeunet rewrote the screenplay for a French actress. Audrey Tautou was the first actress he auditioned.

The filmmakers made use of computer-generated imagery and a digital intermediate.

The studio scenes were filmed in the Coloneum Studio in Cologne (Germany).


Distribution and responses
The film was released in France, Belgium, and French-speaking western Switzerland in April 2001, with subsequent screenings at various film festivals followed by releases around the world. It received limited releases in North America, the UK and Australasia later in 2001.


Racism accusation

Lucien (Jamel Debbouze)The film was a critical and commercial success, but it was attacked by critic Serge Kaganski of les Inrockuptibles for its depiction of a largely unrealistic and picturesque vision of contemporary French society, a postcard universe of a bygone France with few people from ethnic minorities. If the director was trying to create an idyllic vision of a perfect Paris, Kaganski argued, he seemed to think that it was necessary to remove nearly all black people from the scene in order to do so.Jeunet dismissed such criticism by pointing out both that the photo collection contains pictures of many different people from numerous ethnic backgrounds, and that Jamel Debbouze, who plays Lucien, is of North African descent.


Cannes rejection
Cannes Film Festival selector Gilles Jacob described Amélie as "uninteresting", and therefore it was not screened at the festival, although the version he viewed was an early cut without music. The absence of Amélie at the festival caused something of a controversy because of the warm welcome by the French media and audience in contrast with the reaction of the selector.[5]


Awards
The film was a critical and box office success, gaining wide play internationally as well. It was nominated for five Academy Awards:

Best Art Direction, Aline Bonetto (art director), Marie-Laure Valla (set decorator)
Best Cinematography, Bruno Delbonnel
Best Foreign Language Film, France
Best Original Screenplay, Guillaume Laurant, Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Best Sound, Vincent Arnardi, Guillaume Leriche, Jean Umansky
In 2001 it won several awards at the European Film Awards, including the Best Film award.

It also won the People's Choice award at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Crystal Globe Award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

In 2002, in France, it won the César Award for:

Best Film
Best Director
Best Music
Best Art Direction
The film was selected by The New York Times as one of "The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made."

In 2006, the film came second in a national poll of Australia's favourite films, conduced by television station ABC TV.

Although not an award from the film-industry, a recently discovered new species of frog was named as Cochranella amelie in honor of the movie Amelie.A significant honor in the academic world, the scientist that described the new species stated: "The name of this new species of Glassfrog is for Amelie, protagonist of the extraordinary movie “Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain”; a movie where little details play an important role in the achievement of joie de vivre; like the important role that Glassfrogs and all amphibians and reptiles play in the health of our planet". This new species was described in the scientific journal Zootaxa in an article entitle d "An enigmatic new species of Glassfrog (Amphibia: Anura: Centrolenidae) from the Amazonian Andean slopes of Ecuador"


Artwork featured
The film features the artwork of Michael Sowa, whose paintings adorn the walls in Amélie's bedroom, at one point engaging in a surreal conversation about Amélie's love life.

Film clips used
The film featured film or video clips from the following:

A TV performance by the manic guitar-playing gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe;
An excerpt of the documentary Born for Hard Luck, by Tom Davenport, featuring "Peg Leg" Sam Jackson
An excerpt of the 1998 documentary Seventeen Seconds to Sophie by Bill Cote
A clip from Father's Little Dividend
Three clips from François Truffaut's French New Wave film Jules et Jim:
Jules, Jim and Catherine running across an overpass.
A "kissing scene" during which a bug crawls across the screen behind two lovers and appears to enter the woman's mouth. This clip is specifically discussed by the narrator of Amélie, and during the clip a circle is superimposed around the bug to highlight its travel.
A brief excerpt of Catherine singing her song, Le Tourbillon.
A segment from French television where a horse runs along a road with cyclists during the Criterium International.
A short scene of Zorro and his trademark of slashing with his sword a "Z".

Soundtrack

Track listing

Disc 1 (54:15)
"J'y suis jamais allé" - 1:34
"Les jours tristes (Instrumental)" - 3:03
"La valse d'Amélie (Original version)" - 2:15
"Comptine d'un autre été: l'après-midi" - 2:20
"La noyée" - 2:03
"L'autre valse d'Amélie" - 1:33
"Guilty (Al Bowlly)" - 3:13
"À quai" - 3:32
"Le moulin" - 4:27
"Pas si simple" - 1:52
"La valse d'Amélie (Orchestral version)" - 2:00
"La valse des vieux os" - 2:20
"La dispute" - 4:15
"Si tu n'étais pas là (Fréhel)" - 3:29
"Soir de fête" - 2:55
"La redécouverte" - 1:13
"Sur le fil" - 4:23
"Le banquet" - 1:31
"La valse d'Amélie (Piano version)" - 2:38
"La valse des monstres" - 3:39





Translation differences
In the English subtitled version, the concierge, Madeleine Wallace, is renamed Madeleine Wells in order to maintain a joke in the screenplay: in the original French, she mentions that she is destined to cry because of her surname Wallace (referring to the Wallace fountains of Paris). The English version keeps the joke by comparing Wells to water wells.

In the Region 1 English subtitled DVD when Amélie orders Nino to look at 'page 51' of his scrapbook, the subtitle erroneously reads 'Page St.' This mistake does not appear on U.S. television sets programmed to display closed captioning.

In the Region 1 English subtitles, Amelie says "But I hate it in old movies, when drivers don't watch the road"; but the French dialogue in fact means "But I hate it in old American films when the drivers don't watch the road." This distinction, however, remains in the Region 2 English subtitling.