Post by StevePulaski on Oct 8, 2015 9:46:09 GMT -5
Amélie (2001)
Directed by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Audrey Tautou.
Rating: ★★½
Directed by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Audrey Tautou.
Rating: ★★½
Amélie is a film predicated off of a whimsical color pattern - consisting mostly of urine-yellows, pea-greens, and blood-reds - and an impossibly fantastical world with a unique presence at its core. It opens by defining the characters that surround our protagonist Amélie Poulain (the uniquely beautiful Audrey Tautou) by their strangest, most peculiar quirks; one character gets deep enjoyment out of using his fingers to elaborately dissect the hot carcus of a turkey and another character's greatest pleasure is emptying our her purse just to put everything back again. In the grand scheme, these quirks are fairly minor, but the fact that these are the traits screenwriter Guillaume Laurant wants us to immediately associate these characters with - not a job, a specific education, a personality trait, or a personal history - is, in itself, a tad subversive.
With that, we finally meet Amélie, a woman who was kept largely sheltered as a child, being homeschooled by her now-dead mother and, as a result, learning to escape monotony and certain gloom by running away in the realms of her imagination. Working as a waittress at the Café des 2 Moulins in Montmartre, France, Amélie has consistently led a fairly isolated life largely focused on herself, until one day, her motivations change in the blink of an eye. Upon hearing the breaking news report concerning the death of Princess Diana, she drops the cap to her perfume, which rolls and eventually dislodges a loose tile. Behind the tile is a small tin of trinkets, presumably belonging to a young child. Amélie decides it was something of her destiny to find this box and return it to the rightful owner, and before long, she finds her destiny of helping others panning out with another circumstance of a lost item.
The significance and contents of said lost items are irrelevant; their purpose is to, in turn, provide Amélie with something she never had before and that something is a reason to exist and belong. Throughout her life, while not depressed nor particularly sad, Amélie's loneliness has been a constant thing she's had to battle in her day-to-day actions; it's been the typical daily occurrence of her to wake up, go to work, and relish in her alone time for years on end. These situations allow her to search for some kind of companionship, further develop her love for humankind, and find maybe even find a romantic partner.
Of course, I'm making this sound a lot more extravagant than I think I should be. Amélie, through all its color and decorated mise-en-scene, is a drearily familiar story with its original element being the fact that it's captured in a realm of artificiality that, in turn, makes it appear far more compelling than it ever manages to naturally be. It reminds me of the lesser films of Wes Anderson, which weren't so much concerned about how many objects, costumes, and people could be fixed into one particular frame, or the general excitement of dialog as much as they were presentation and eccentric dialog.
While the visuals in Amélie are colorful marbles, and the juxtaposition of characters with cinematographical color (the work of the great Bruno Delbonnel, who'd go on to work with the Coen brothers and Tim Burton in more recent years) is unmistakable, these efforts feel more geared to disguise the fact that Amélie is a relatively simple story with little in the way of remarkable themes. The presence of scenes ostensibly colored by way of a filter over the lens, canted angles (most notably during a scene showcasing a character named Bredoteau's most traumatic moment as a child), and lavish setpieces almost entirely blind us by whimsy and warmth until we realize the takeaway from the film is that of an empty candy wrapper.
There's something to be said about Tautou, however, who remains an interesting screen presence throughout the film simply because of her presentation. Her jet-black hair, petite figure, frequently blood-red wardrobe and lipstick, and ghostly paleness make her protrude out in nearly every scene, even if the background is a pulsating hue of red - as it is in a scene when she reads a letter in a bathroom. In addition, scenes in the sex shop bring a fascinating level of warmth to a place often condemned and avoided for its almost inherent seaminess. But just like I find myself doing now, one winds up remembering Amélie for short, eye-catching scenes rather than a complete film with an impacting takeaway.
Starring: Audrey Tautou and Mathieu Kassovitz. Directed by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet.