 --- Subtitled --- Tagline: She'll change your life. She'll change your life. The City of Lights sparkles in this "delightful and original" (Boston Globe) quirky comedy that garnered 5 Academy Award nominations. At a tiny Parisian caf, the adorable yet painfully shy Amelie accidentally discovers a gift for helping others. Soon Amelie is spending her days as a Cupid, guardian angel and all-around do-gooder. But when she bumps into a handsome stranger, will she find the courage to become the star of her very own love story? Audrey Tautou (The Da Vinci Code) shines in this "lighthearted fantasy" (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times) that stole the hearts of audiences and critics worldwide. Storyline: Amélie is a story about a girl named Amélie whose childhood was suppressed by her Father's mistaken concerns of a heart defect. With these concerns Amélie gets hardly any real life contact with other people. This leads Amélie to resort to her own fantastical world and dreams of love and beauty. She later on becomes a young woman and moves to the central part of Paris as a waitress. After finding a lost treasure belonging to the former occupant of her apartment, she decides to return it to him. After seeing his reaction and his new found perspective - she decides to devote her life to the people around her. Such as, her father who is obsessed with his garden-gnome, a failed writer, a hypochondriac, a man who stalks his ex girlfriends, the "ghost", a suppressed young soul, the love of her life and a man whose bones are as brittle as glass. But after consuming herself with these escapades - she finds out that she is disregarding her own life and damaging her quest for love. Amélie then ... Written by spragg_s Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman on July 15, 2011 -- One of my favorite all-time commentary moments was provided by the ever colorful Ron Perlman on his commentary track for the decidedly odd film City of Lost Children, one of a number of wonderful collaborations by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Perlman starts his commentary on the film out by saying something along the lines of, "This is the extremely peculiar opening of City of Lost Children. . .which is followed by the extremely peculiar middle section and then the extremely peculiar ending." As off the cuff hilarious as that comment is, it in its own way aptly sums up the really unique world of Caro-Jeunet films, films which include such disparate fare as the cult hit Delicatessen and the multiplex sensation Alien Resurrection (actually solely directed by Jeunet, but featuring some production design help from Caro). Jeunet's very distinctive flair for both story and directorial ebullience is also fully on display in the incredibly charming, and just as incredible odd, Amélie, a film which rather unexpectedly became an international attraction of rather gigantic proportions, ultimately garnering five Academy Award nominations. As with most Jeunet (or Jeunet-Caro) films, Amélie is a completely quirky outing that combines a completely inventive and captivating production design with a decidedly anti-Hollywood approach to a standard three act, overly structured storyline. Like its breakout star Audrey Tatou, Amélie is full of charm and a sort of innocent sex appeal, idiosyncratic and singularly eccentric and even more than a little bit odd at times. Jeunet's abject refusal to follow accepted filmic norms is evident right off the bat with Amélie. We're given a number of brief snippets of events happening at the same time, seemingly without any real connection to each other save for their simultaneity, one of which includes the conception of Amelie herself. A timelapse montage of Amélie's mother's growing pregnant belly leads to a brief scene of Amélie being born, and we get the title sequence (and it's instructive to note that the original French title of the film is the perhaps more descriptive The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain). And then, for virtually the next fifteen minutes, we are greeted with a narrated sequence which gives us Amelie's background while also introducing us to a number of other supporting characters. This opening gambit is odd in and of itself, but its most fascinating characteristic is that despite being narrated, we don't feel especially removed from Amélie or indeed the many other characters introduced in this sequence. We're thrust headlong into the weird and wonderful world of Amélie, a girl who by fate or circumstance is isolated from the world and especially from other children and who learns to exist within the rather spacious confines of her imagination. And then, about three quarters of the way through this opening narrated segment, a bizarre, seemingly random, event occurs (and seemingly random events are sprinkled into Amélie like fine garnishes offered at the best French restaurants). Amélie, now a young woman working as a waitress at a Montmartre café, is getting ready for bed in the evening in her bathroom when she overhears a news report on the television in the other room announcing the death of Princess Diana. In shock, Amélie drops a bottle cap which rolls and loosens a baseboard tile. Curious, Amélie crawls over and pulls the tile away, revealing a treasure box secreted some 40 years previously by a little boy who had lived in the same apartment. Within a short span of time, she resolves to find the boy (now obviously a middle-aged man) who had put the box there and to return it to him. If he responds well to the reuniting, she'll dedicate her life to good deeds. If he doesn't, she'll chalk the whole event up to the vagaries of chance and go on her semi-merry way. To say more about the meandering plot of Amélie, a plot which twists and turns like one of the zig-zagging alleyways of Montmartre itself, would be unfair to anyone who hasn't yet come under the spell of this singular and very unique film. Suffice it to say that Jeunet consistently defies expectations while never completely scuttling an emotional resonance that makes the character of Amélie easily understandable and more than anything incredibly sympathetic. Amélie is a film with an almost overwhelming amount of heart, but it's never treacly and instead tends toward a sort of arch humor, albeit one never laced with cynicism or irony. The term gamine seems destined to be preternaturally linked to women named Audrey. For a prior generation, Audrey Hepburn was the ultimate gamine, but it may turn out that Audrey Tatou eclipses Hepburn herself in terms of the doe-eyed innocence and sweetly vulnerable naďvete most often associated with the term. Though Amélie was evidently originally written with Emily Watson in mind for its title role, it was an incredible stroke of luck that Tatou ended up in the role, for rarely if ever have an actress and a role been so perfectly married. Tatou's unbelievably expressive face and her almost mime-like ability to depict emotional states with little or no dialogue helps to create the very real sense of magic which imbues Amelie with much of its luster. Amélie is easily one of the downright sweetest films to come down the pike over the past several years, but the wonderful news is that it manages to maintain its own sense of the fantastic at virtually every turn without ever seeming overly fake. Jeunet's inerrant sense of hyperrealism merged with surrealism and just out right magical realism makes Amelie a completely idiosyncratic experience that is literally incomparable. It may in the inimitable words of Ron Perlman be "extremely peculiar," but it's the sort of absolutely original concoction that is too often lacking in the modern world of cinema. I hadn't yet seen Delicatessen when I stumbled on City of Lost Children in a video store and picked it up simply because the cover was kind of cool. I instantly fell in love with that movie and have been a confirmed Jeunet (and Jeunet-Caro) fan ever since. This is a director who doesn't make any bones about having a completely unique and idiosyncratic vision, and he brings such overwhelming amounts of whimsy and invention to his films that it can be daunting at times. It's all the more amazing, then, that Amélie is so quietly effective and easily entertaining. This is a film which almost incessantly pushes stylistic bounds in an exuberant manner, but which never loses sight of the fragile girl at the center of its story. There's a subplot concerning cloning in City of Lost Children, but when you see a film of Amélie genius and innovation, you can't help but wish Jeunet could clone himself so that we'd have more of his wonderful films to enjoy. This is an excellent Blu-ray release of a formidably original film, and it easily comes Highly recommended. [CSW] -4.8- Surreal, whimsical, colorful, funny, delightful, intriguing. These words all describe this movie. Beginning with a dark fantasy like narration, we are introduced to young Amelie who is utterly adorable, mischievous and even a little diabolical as witnessed by the priceless revenge scene with young Amelie torturing a man who had it coming. Little Amelie grows up to be utterly adorable, mischievous and a little diabolical as she sets out to do the world more good than harm, except for those who need harming, which is always done without physical distress, but inventive slyness. We watch Amelie encounter weird, wonderful characters while living in a color saturated world filled with Cirque du Soleil type whimsy that makes the most of its limited special effects in beautiful, unexpected ways. My only problem with this movie is that it was a tad bit too long. There were stretches where something was drawn out or repeated once too often that made me want to fast forward. But just when I would reach for the remote, something absolutely fantastic would happen, coming from way out in left field that would stay my hand and put a smile on my face. See it for the music, see it for the story and see it for the birth of Travelocity's Roaming Gnome. IMDb Rating (06/15/14): 8.5/10 from 392,119 users Top 250: #62 IMDb Rating (10/14/13): 8.4/10 from 351,836 users Top 250: #69 IMDb Rating (10/15/07): 8.5/10 from 110,623 users Top 250: #38 IMDb Rating (02/24/07): 8.6/10 from 92,393 users Top 250: #31
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