Amelie
Amelie is a surprisingly fresh fable of shy twentysomething love that playfully elaborates a young woman’s journey from abstract to specific social engagement. Commencing in the fractal storytelling style pioneered by Run Lola Run, Amelie eventually settles down into a more conventionally linear narrative form in which the themes of unarticulated emotional loss, insecurity, memory, revenge, and the risks of interpersonal engagement are explored against the backdrop of a shellshocked post-Diana Paris.
A dysfunctional love story, the film simultaneously elaborates its central themes and maintains its street cred by clothing the central narrative in a postmodernist blaze of witticisms, observations, situations and characters that cloak the protagonists in various levels of irony and barely veiled metaphor. Amelie captivates us by unrolling her spool of mischief, then spins a magical world in which middle-aged men are reunited with their childhood in telephone boxes, and garden gnomes travel the world first class.
However, Amelie’s luminous fragility shines through these attempts at connection, intimating to the audience that this is just a displacement for her true needs, and before long we witness her stumbling towards more specific social engagement, through a landscape of brutalized and alienated metropolitan pathologies, through the role of humane yet anonymous benefactor, and finally to a truly intimate connection. We feel for her, and become involved by the tension between her isolation and the urgency engendered by her barely-acknowledged sense of her own unfolding tragic potential as manifested by the older characters. Ultimately, however, while the film engages our emotions and provides a deeper message in its slyly nuanced intimations of social decay and renewal, it completely fails as a French film because not enough of the chicks get their gear off.
Ross Williams
Le Fabuleux Destin D’Amélie Poulin
This film has been doing hugely well in France and they’re all feeling very pleased with themselves over how well French cinema is doing in spite of not winning anything at Cannes. However, I’m not going to be nasty as the only Cannes entry I’ve seen so far was an overly-arty Jean-Luc Godard, and the non-Cannes include Le Pacte des Loups (The Brotherhood of the Wolf in English) — an over-the-top if fun period action-adventure fantasy — and Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulin, both the sorts of thing that just might make it to Australia. Eventually.
Words used to describe this film have been: cute, charming, sweet, feel-good, funny, and I’m sure ‘quirky’ would be in there somewhere if there’s a French equivalent (not the sort of word one gets to use in one’s thesis I’m afraid) — but don’t let that put you off. The film has a lovely golden glow of unreality, matched by the cinematography which makes Paris look like it’s seen through a 3-D slide and a bit of rapid-fire freeze-framing. It works. The humour is occasionally wicked, occasionally outrageous and often touching. There’s a hint of Roald Dahl and a few borrowings from urban legend (I shall limit myself to a reference to “garden gnome”...)
There is quite a bit of voiceover narration, which begins by introducing us to Amélie Poulin, only child of rather distant parents who lives in her own introverted world, occupies an apartment in Montmartre and works in a local café. One day, an incident provokes her into making contact, of a sort, with the people around her, and thus the “fabuleux destin” begins — puzzles, enigmas and chases around Paris ensue. Or is it really only an extension of Amélie’s fantasy world?
Not very deep, a little meaningful and too much fun to have won anything at Cannes anyway.
S.L.
