Jeunet’s Paris is a thoroughly sanitised version of the real thing-Paris inside the “ periferique” (the ring road around the city)-clean, tidy, free from honking cars, tourists, too many foreigners and other complications. With a sweep Jeunet has established an important pre-condition for his “fabulous” but also very hermetic world of Amelie, where there is nothing better to concentrate on than the peregrinations of the film’s heroine in her entirely predictable search for true love. It is useless to look for any other news. The Princess Di headlines and story dominate the pages of all papers-as well as the billboards. It is the start of September 1997, one day after the violent death of Princess Diana in a Paris car crash. Amelie goes to a newspaper stand to buy a paper. The world of politics and power is alien and far removed. They possess a surplus of foibles, weaknesses and endearing eccentricities: the one-armed boy working for the greengrocer who is so tender and respectful to the fruit and vegetables he handles, the elderly artist neighbour suffering from brittle bone disease who every year paints a copy of the same picture, as well as Amelie herself, of course, and her colleagues and customers in the bar where she works. Later we encounter Amelie (Audrey Tautou) as a shy, introverted woman in her middle twenties working in a bar in Montmartre.Īll of Jeunet’s characters in Amelie are semi-proletarian, but far removed from what might be regarded as ordinary. Pressing his stethoscope to her chest the father concludes that the girl has a heart defect and proceeds to wall her off from the external world. Aroused by the rare bodily nearness of her father during one such examination, Amelie’s young heart races.
The only time he touches his child is in the course of a routine examination he makes once a month. Her father is a doctor incapable of real affection and physical warmth.
French movie amelie poulain series#
In a hectic series of intricately compiled images we speed through the infancy and childhood of Amelie. Under a microscope a sperm embeds itself into an egg-we are witnessing the conception of the film’s main character, Amelie.
We witness a fly being run over by a car, switch abruptly to drinking glasses dancing on a white cloth being blown by the wind, and then a man rubbing out the telephone number from his address book of a friend who has just died. It is worth exploring why this is so.Īmelie begins with the juxtaposition of a series of unconnected, everyday images. Nevertheless the attendance figures for his film indicates he has hit a nerve with the public. Separated from Jeunet’s pyrotechnical imagery, the figures and characters in his films remain schematic and unconvincing, while the moral of Amelie is simply banal. His initial background as a filmmaker was in cartoons and animation film, and it shows. Jean-Pierre Jeunet has a talent for translating everyday events into compelling images. It has just opened in Germany to largely gushing reviews that invariably note that both French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and President Jacques Chirac have made a point of seeing and enthusing about the film. Following its rejection for programme inclusion by the director of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Amelie (as his new film is being called in English) has enjoyed a meteoric success in French cinemas with a viewing public of nearly eight million since its release in May. Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain is the most recent film by French film director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, whose previous works include Delicatessen (1991), The City of Lost Children (1995) and the fourth “Alien” remake Alien: Resurrection (1997).
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