Amelie is a charming and heartfelt delight that makes you leave the theatre smiling. There's lots to love about this movie but the most endearing thing is the title character, Amelie. She is so sweet and charasmatic that the audience is just pulling for her the whole time. She is shy so she doesn't have too much dialogue in the movie but by her quirky movements and facial expressions just tell the whole story. Just looking at the movie poster, you can already deduce the kind of personality that Amelie is. She's a dreamer and has a wild imagination and the movie goes and shows us, in interesting ways, the way that her mind works.
Now the plot of the story is simple and basic - she does good deeds for everyone and it makes her happy, but that just fits in with the feel of the movie. It's not bogged down by a complex storyline, but rather shows that her good deeds to help others and just simple deeds in which she extends a little of her self which in effect changes everyone elses lives.
Her relationships with others is explored here in different degrees. We see the problems she has relating to her family, the relationships with her small group of friends and neighbors, and the problems of finding her own intimate relationship. By improving on all of these she keeps herself happy. But we come to wonder will anybody ever do anything for her?
The story is cheerful, with lots of funny scenes (one person works in a porn toy shop), and is very light-hearted - the kind of story you read about in fairy tales. Every person she encounters is indeed a character. There are so many of them to that it may be easy to lose track of everyone, but the numerous characters add another dimension to the movie. It is just delightful to see how her personality reacts with the varied personalities of everyone else.
This film is sort of an "art-house" movie, in which there is symbolism you have to figure out yourself and scenes that make the audience think. It's also a French film with subtitles, but most of the movie is enjoyed by just watching Amelie herself.
A movie that just makes you smile - and that alone makes it a good movie.
SYNOPSIS
IN THEATRES: NOVEMBER 2, 2001
Am�lie Poulain (Audrey Tautou) is a young woman who glides through the streets of Paris as quietly as a mouse. With wide eyes and a tiny grin, she sees the world in a magical light, discovering minor miracles every day. A shy and reserved person whose favorite moments are spent alone skimming stones into the water, Am�lie was raised by a pair of eccentrics who falsely diagnosed her with a heart problem at the age of six and so limited her exposure to the outside world. Now a free and independent woman, Am�lie wears a bob that curls in every direction and dresses in red. With a job in a caf� and an aptitude for spying on her neighbors, Am�lie entertains herself by enacting a series of homemade, kindhearted practical jokes. She returns a long-forgotten box of childhood knickknacks to its proper owner, she sends her father's garden troll on a trip around the world, and she creates a love connection at the caf� between the hypochondriac druggist and a beer-drinking old grouch. But when the day is done, Am�lie finds one stone unturned, and decides to work her magic on the quirky object of her affections, Nino Quincampoix (Matthieu Kassovitz), whom she has never met.
Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (who codirected DELICATESSEN and THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN with Marc Caro) presents AM�LIE, a gorgeous and inventive film. The rich, glowing color scheme is offset by flashbacks in black and white archival footage that give short biographies of each character. A soft-spoken narrator guides viewers through this enlightening fairy tale, which sometimes speeds through the streets and other times drifts in slow motion. AM�LIE is humorous, questioning, and strange, and it will change the lives of all who watch it if only for a short while after leaving Am�lie's world.