<< Back 8/21/02 Picture Show By Gary Carden Amelie (French with English subtitles) Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet Cast: Audry Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz Rated: R Well, movie fans, even as you read this embarrassingly enthusiastic review, “Amelie” is well on the way to becoming a “cult classic.” Although it is available on VHS, there is definitely an advantage in expeiencing all of Audrey Tauton’s impish gamine charm — not to mention the sweeping panaramas of Parisian scenery — in lush detail. Of course, I’m not sure that the streets and buildings of “Amelie” really exist since Jeunet has a talent for magically transforming mere landscape into something that looks like a suburb of Oz. Yes, the scenery is wonderful, but Audrey Tauton (Amelie) is what enchants you. Amelie has a lot of problems. She is painfully shy and intimidated by the adult world — especially her dour, dull parents who are quick to assure her that she lacks the ability to succeed or “get along with others.” Intimidated by the failure of her initial attempts to communicate, Amelie becomes an observer of life — in other words a voyeur. Shortly after her mother’s ridiculous suicide (don’t ask), Amelie escapes the stifling monotony of her father’s household by finding her own apartment and going to work as a waitress at a rundown, quirky restaurant called The Two Windmills, an establishment that contains a delightful collection of “life’s casualties — for example, the limping lady who owns the place assures everyone that true love does not exist. She knows, because she was a bare-back rider and circus performer who was in love with a trapese artist. “They will all drop you when you least expect it,” she warns Amelie. Amelie’s world is circumscribed by her apartment, her neighbors, the grocers, The Two Windmills and a few municipal buildings; however, when viewed through this young girl’s eyes, such prosaic surroundings have all of the excitement and exotic appeal of foreign climes. Deprived of love and any of the normal pursuits of a young woman, Amelie studies her neighbors and co-workers. There is the old painter who has “brittle bones” and endlessly duplicates Renoir, the widowed landlady who reads the uninspired letters from her dead husband: Amelie’s father, who is building a bizarre memorial to his dead wife in the back yard (crowned by a jolly garden gnome); the grocer who torments his slow-witted son; the hypocondriac who sells tobacco at the restaurant, a failed writer and an embittered, love-lorn fellow who is hopelessly in love with the owner of the restaurant. Amelie studies them all with irrepresible curiosity and finally decides to ...intefere. It all begins with the accidental discovery of small, rusty box concealed within the walls of Amelie’s bathroom. It contains a collection of childhood mementos and Amelie decides to discover the original owner (now in his 50’s) and return them without revealing her identity. She succeeds and is so affected by the tearful response of the owner, she decides to initiate a career of anonymous kindness. Throughout the film, she collects stones and drops them in her pocket. When she is tense, she skips the stones in the river. Eventually, Amelie (who talks directly to the audience) begins a massive campaign to help her miserable neighbors find happiness (She also decides to become a kind of agent of divine retribution and punish a few miscreants, too). She “acquires” the landlady’s bundle of dull letters and creates a “lost letter” which is filled with passion, romance and endearments. Then, she removes the garden gnome from the top of her father’s memorial, and hatches a scheme to save her father from a meaningless existence. Suddenly, her father begins to receive photographs from exotic places — all depicting the garden gnome posed before famous landmarks. The gnome is traveling! With a bit of stage management from Amelie, the hypocondriac and the embittered lover discover a mutual passion and initiate a torrid love affair; the grocer’s son becomes friends with the painter, who decides to stop copying Renoirs and travel. The grocer finds his life beset by inexplicable problems: reversed door-knobs, malfunctioning alarm clocks, and bedroom slippers that no longer fit. As the grocer’s morale decreases, the son’s confidence blossoms. He becomes witty and affable, but only when his father isn’t around. Sometimes Amelie imagines her death from exhaustion — dead at the age of 23 and mourned by all of France. She becomes sentimental and skips a lot of stones. As she watches her neighbors discover joy, she finally acknowledges that she needs to find someone. Fate invervenes and Amelie meets her counterpart — an eccentric young fellow who spends all of his time reconstructing the torn photos of people’s faces that he finds at a photo booth (he has albums of hundreds of faces, and Amelie finds one in the street. The ensuing courtship is marvelous —especially since Amelie is determined to remain anonymous! Then ... Well, enough. I will leave something for the viewer to discover. Of course, I haven’t reduced the viewer’s pleasure by relating the plot, for the real joy of this film is in seeing it. Jeunet, the director of “Amelie” also did “City of Lost Children,” a delightful fantasy that shares much of the same charms — lucious photography, droll humor, and memorable characters. The musical score of “Amelie” is equally appealing and contains a wonderful rendition of an old 50’s hit, “Guilty of Loving You.” Watch this one twice ... it is actually better the second time.