"Amelie" Film Diary

“Amelie” was filmed in 2001, and was directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. The title of the movie in France was “Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain”. “Amelie” is about Amelie (how appropriate) from Montmartre, Paris, France. Amelie’s father thinks that she has a heart condition because every time he would give her a check-up, her heart would start racing. Her heart was racing because she was excited because that is the only time her father would touch her. Amelie’s mother died when she was a young girl from a freak accident when someone jumped off of the Notre Dame Cathedral and landed on Amelie’s mother. When Amelie grows up, she becomes a waitress at a small café in Montmartre called “The Two Windmills” (I visited this when I was in Paris!). Amelie gave up on romantic relationships after several failed experiences in bed with men. Shortly after Princess Diana’s death, Amelie found a small metal box that was hidden beneath a tile in her bathroom. It appeared to be some ones childhood memory’s inside the box. Amelie decided to hunt down the person that the box belonged to. If he was happy and grateful, she would help other people, and if he wasn’t happy and grateful, too bad. When she finally did hunt down the man the box belonged to, at first he didn’t seem grateful, but after following him to a bar, she found out he indeed was grateful. Amelie then made the decision that she would spend the rest of her free time helping people. She helped her father, who she wanted to travel the world, by placing gnomes throughout the world, hoping he would start traveling the world. She helped two of her coworkers and friends by setting them up. She helps Nino by returning his book of photos, and later helps him by secretly setting him up to meet the man in all of his photos that he has collected from the photo machines, who ended up being the photo machine repairman. She also helps the man that worked at the vegetable stand, by getting revenge on his boss who treated him like garbage, and letting the man stand out. Amelie ends up falling in love with Nino, and set up several opportunities for him to meet her, but was too shy to go through with the meetings. They eventually got together, when Amelie’s friends decide to help her, and live a life in love, happily ever after.
The overall theme of “Amelie” was that if you do good things, and help people, good things will happen to you, and when you need help, your friends will be there to help you.
I absolutely loved this movie. It is hard to describe the way this movie was shot and the flow of this movie in words, but I will try (although I am sure I won’t do it justice). First of all, the movie is shot in a way that almost made it feel like a fairy tale. There were some very interesting special effects used in “Amelie”, although they weren’t necessarily used often, and definitely weren’t overused. The special effects, I believe were used to give it that fairy tale feel. I think that even describing “Amelie” as a modern day fairy tale would be appropriate, because the story structure is similar to a fairy tale. “Amelie” was a fun movie to watch, and flowed wonderfully. The movie went by very quickly, which after watching “The Piano Teacher” and “Blue” is a godsend. But “Amelie” felt like the kind of movie that I didn’t want to end. It really was a feel good movie. No one can say that “Amelie” was a rip-off of another film, because it was just filled with originality. For a movie that didn’t have a very deep storyline, it did a great job of tying together all of the characters and all of the storylines throughout the movie. There were no loose ends in this film.