Amélie Poulain: A Tale For Dreamers
Since its premiere in 2001, Amélie Poulain has become an icon of French cinema, a myth of the French capital in which, every year, fans of the film try to discover and browse the scenes of the film.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet gave us a truly unusual romantic comedy, charming and with an unmistakable personality. Yann Tiersen’s soundtrack, the garden gnomes, the Canal Saint-Martin, the café where Amélie works… Everything has been etched in our memories forever.
Amélie is a character both endearing and bizarre who conquered us all at the start of the new millennium. A character who, as the promotional posters for the film pointed out, has come to change our lives.
The beauty of his photography and his attention to detail manage to plunge us into a fable where everyday life seems to become magical, where the strange and the common merge happily. It is above all a rather special love story, but captivating. Creative and original, Amélie Poulain remains, for many, a reference.
A lonely childhood
As usual in the stories and in the most archetypal construction of the hero, Amélie is presented from her debut, that is, from her childhood.
Despite the comedic overtones, we observe a rather dark past and a lonely childhood, as the childhood of heroes often is. Jeunet presents our heroine to us as the only daughter of a married couple who does not pay her much attention.
Also, we have an omniscient narrator, a voice over who knows the life of the characters in detail and invites us to discover them through their curiosities and particularities.
This narrator guides us through the lonely childhood of a girl who has no right to go to school and who will soon suffer the tragic loss of her mother. Faced with so much sadness, little Amélie decides to take refuge in a particular imaginary world.
This presentation helps us to better understand adult Amélie. Amélie is a young woman who, although living in Paris and working as a waitress, retains the features that already characterized her in her childhood. Introverted and extraordinarily dreamy, Amélie’s life will change the same day that a tragic accident eclipsed contemporary history: the death of Lady Di.
This famous news item is used with irony and intelligence to show us how Amélie, to her great astonishment, finds a little treasure locked up in her apartment in Montmartre.
Amélie Poulain’s solitary life finally seems to have only one goal: to help others in an altruistic way. In her quest to find the owner of the metal box hidden for 40 years in his apartment, Amélie will discover that the best way to find happiness is, without doubt, to improve the lives of those around him.
The presence of love
Amélie Poulain speaks not only of altruism, but also of love and we can observe different directions.
One of the main questions that came to my mind before seeing the movie again was how this movie survived the passage of time. We must not forget that, in recent years, some stories no longer passed through the current filter.
Amélie Poulain, like many romantic comedies from the early 2000s, shows us an absolutely mythical idea of romantic love.
An idealization which, in reality, has been and continues to be very present in cinema. We could even say that the cinema has contributed enormously to create an imagination that has fueled the fantasies of many.
Amélie has a love affair with Nino, a young man she doesn’t even know. The public hardly knows him and will gradually know more about him by accompanying the protagonist in his love story. A totally mythologized story which partly responds to our idea of a “fairy tale”.
We could blame Amélie for this irrational infatuation and, if we analyze this person in depth, we could say that Amélie is a weird person. However, we neglect these details and let ourselves be carried away by the magic of the fable.
After all, Amélie Poulain is a film full of charm and detail. So, while romantic love is mythologized, it’s easy to appreciate the film and forget for a moment the current context. This is a fairy tale in a real setting.
However, all is not rosy. Let’s talk about the character of Joseph, a man obsessed with one of Amélie’s companions. The character is presented as a stalker and Amélie decides to avenge her partner.
In addition to these stories where love makes its appearance, it should be noted that Amélie herself will eventually realize that there is no love more important than hers. The protagonist realizes that her desire to help others is meaningless if she does not decide to help herself. And that’s probably the biggest act of love we see in the movie.
Amélie Poulain: a careful staging
At Amélie everything seems sweet, but the young woman will not hesitate to show her character when necessary. Behind this shy smile hides a young woman who, faced with injustice, will act in a vengeful, even childish manner.
Let us not forget that Amélie is a dreamer who seems to live permanently in an imaginary tale, a young woman who has not abandoned her most childish side. All this is reflected in its staging, as we pointed out in the first lines: the soundtrack draws all this fantasy.
Although we are in the real world, in a city known as Paris, we still have the feeling that we are in front of something magical, imaginary. The colors, decorations and even the costumes of the characters make us dream.
We know the personality of each of the characters thanks to their houses, their clothes, their mimicry… The photography is absolutely neat and gives us very beautiful images.
This film is an atypical romantic comedy in which the protagonist lives out his fantasy and works in the shadows to help others. The setting is the key to understanding all the world Amélie dreams of, and the voiceover will appear at key moments to “read” certain peculiarities of the characters.
The film Amélie Poulain became a success with the public and is the second most profitable French film, behind Intouchables (Nakache, 2011). He won almost every Caesar award, got two BAFTAs and several Oscar nominations.
Without a doubt, it is the quintessential romantic comedy with fantastic accents, the French film that everyone remembers. Amélie Poulain conquered us with her gentleness, but also with her revenge. As the film’s presentation posters announced, Amélie Poulain invites us to see the world from another angle.
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