Amélie (not Emily) in Paris
Quirky rom-com Amélie felt like a breath of fresh air when it was released two decades ago. It's just as relevant today, but for different reasons
Film Features Amelie
Widely considered one of the most quintessential romantic comedies of all time, Amélie feels as if it has always been around. In truth, though, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s quirky French confection is relatively fresh in comparison to so many other classic rom-coms. Originally released in the U.S. in February 2002, Amélie is getting a welcome re-release in theaters today.
The film stars Audrey Tautou as a young charmer with a winning smile and a knack for fixing the lives of those around her. Watching it now—in the current moment of celebration for Barbie, Taylor Swift, and Beyoncé—Amélie represents a quieter type of feminine strength. It seems like both an innocent throwback and a reflection of modern womanhood.
Amélie retains its youthful energy and timeless appeal, in large part because of Tautou’s performance as a young woman with social anxiety, who develops schemes and tricks that will help people while allowing her to maintain anonymity. Her small acts of kindness have a big impact on those around her.
The story takes place in 1997, just after the death of Princess Diana, or “Laydee Dee” as the characters call her. In contrast, the film carries an early 20th-century design sensibility, giving the proceedings a cozy, nostalgic feel. Meticulous sets and stylish cinematography evoke the whimsy and distinctive curation of Wes Anderson’s films. Originally, the velocity of the story and rapid cutting were considered “frenetic.” Not anymore. Our sped-up world has caught up to Amélie’s pace and tempo.
As the only child of a father with a “hard heart” and an “unfit” mother, Amélie makes paper dolls and plays solo games like dominoes. She matures into a loner and an observer of life, neglecting her own happiness by obsessing over the unfulfilled lives of others. At 23, working as a café waitress, she stumbles upon a boy’s tin box of small toys and other treasures. She ventures out to find the now grown-up man who lost it, bringing him unexpected joy. Amélie then vows to continue the good deeds that will balance the scales of unfairness around her, setting in motion her purpose in life, to carry out selfless acts of love.
In her community of neighbors, storekeepers, and café regulars, Amélie has her work cut out for her. She brings together two lonely hearts, takes revenge on a bully grocer by doctoring his slippers, his alcohol, and his speed dial, and escorts a blind man through the streets while describing the sights and smells along the way.
Her ventures are well-choreographed, and jaded critics claimed they were too phony and contrived to be fully satisfying. It’s true that Jeunet’s tale, co-written with Guillaume Laurant, is quite removed from real life. This is a filtered version of the city, on the lines of Emily In Paris. The Montmartre section of Paris, with Sacré Coeur looming, is a cliché romantic setting for Amélie to fall for Nino (Mathieu Kassovitz, La Haine), a handsome collector of photo booth strips.
In contrast to the protagonist’s goodness are characters who are flawed—cruel, weird, or annoying—in this adult fairytale that also features nudity, over-the-top orgasms, and dildos. In fact, Nino works at a porn video store (as well as a haunted house at a fairground). Subtle eroticism pervades throughout, as Amélie slides her hand down a bag of lentils or hears the clicking sound of a beaded curtain swaying.
A fragile-as-glass reclusive neighbor, who paints and repaints a copy of Renoir’s “Luncheon Of The Boating Party,” encourages Amélie to pursue her crush, turning the tables by giving her a boost. He admonishes her for caring for others ahead of herself. She decides to lure Nino through a sophisticated scavenger hunt, a maneuver that may be one of the most romantic gestures in rom-com history.
In a society still reeling from the September 11 attacks, Amélie was an escape during its original release by Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Screenplay and Best Foreign Film, but failed to take home any statuettes. According to Jeunet, the Academy held a grudge against Weinstein at that point because of his perceived shady campaigning practices.
Whatever the reason for Amélie’s Oscars losses, it didn’t affect the film’s legacy. Like its very specific sense of time and place—it’s not quite a period piece, but it’s not distinctly contemporary, either—Amélie remains an idealized version of a world that’s never existed, but one we all wish we lived in. The film seems both timeless and retro, able to speak to audiences no matter when they watch it.
Back when it was first released, Amélie felt like a refreshing escape, a reminder that there was still some good left in the world. Now, it’s easy to project feelings of loneliness and isolation lingering from the COVID-19 pandemic onto Amélie’s shyness and quirky behavior. Twenty years from now, there will be a new modern anxiety, and Amélie will probably prove to be a surprisingly prescient backdrop for that, too. It might be a little contrived, but Amélie’s escapist charm is undeniable.
30 Comments
One of the only romcoms I can actually stand to watch
I remember walking out of the theater after watching Amelie and just feeling good about the world. I rewatched it recently, and I still really love it.This is in a similar category as La La Land since both have been criticized for failing to show the cultural/ethnic diversity of the cities in which each is set, but I just find each of them so magical and charming that I shrug those criticisms off.
I lived in Paris for a few years following the movie’s release, and it does capture so many different aspects of the city, but it is disappointing that this quirky, idealized version of the city is also pretty exclusively white (yes, Jamel Debbouze is in it, but his character is called Lucien and his ethnicity isn’t really ever distinguished as part of the character). I think it was just a missed opportunity, because in my experience living there, the contributions by immigrant communities are such a part of what makes the more vibrant parts of the city really come alive (at least in my experience).
For whatever reason, there’s a detail from the DVD commentary that bubbled to the surface for me. They were having difficulty filming inside the shop because there was a guy who was pissed off because it was a real shop and he wanted to buy cigarettes and couldn’t.
lucky he didnt set fire to something
If you’ve been to Paris, this tracks.
Such a great movie. And she’s so fucking cute in it.
I don’t know if this was universal, but in my social circles at least, both ‘Amélie’ and ‘City of Lost Children’ were just the BIGGEST THING EVER for several years. Everyone owned those two movies, everyone loved them, all the little art theaters had them in rotation every month and the soundtracks were played as the house music in every theatre / cabaret/ burlesque/ circus show.
Then, all of a sudden, the movies both just seemed to… disappear from public discourse. I really hope a re-release of Amélie brings it back into the spotlight.
Oh, yes, The City of Lost Children pre-Amelie was already big in certain circles, especially because of the look of the film, the Gaultier costumes, the score, the Miette-One pairing, etc. I think it got even more attention after Amelie was released, but my teenage kids aren’t interested in seeing these movies partly because I think you’re right that they haven’t really continued to make their mark like other cult movies have.
Or we should go one step further back and revisit Delicatessen, which has long been one of my favorites. I think I enjoyed it more than City of Lost Children.
These are his only two collaborations with Caro. Those two were amazing together. “Bigbug” was fun, but I kept thinking about what it would have been like with the the two of them working their magic like in the 90s.
Good call. City of Lost Children to me is the least of the three.
It’s funny, I was just talking to my girlfriend about delicatessen , city of lost children, and Amelie in reference to quirky / dark films (Amelie being quirky not dark) after seeing poor things, which has certain aspects from all three of them. I havent watched any of them in 10+ years so Im curious how well they hold up
I still get chills when I think of the smoke bubble scene!
A gem of a film and one of my favorite soundtracks too
Yes! I’m glad somebody else mentioned the music- the score when the guy with the box of toys finds it in the phone booth always makes me tear up!!
I’ve been introducing my wife to films I loved once upon a time, and this one actually didn’t work for either of us. To much felt off, in ways that weren’t purposeful. It didn’t feel as sweet and bouyant as it has to me, and my wife liked it less than I did.
I remember at the time not quite getting what all the fuss was about. I watched it, it was okay, but I honestly couldn’t see how it had so fully captured all these hearts.
This movie literally was a 9/11 escape for me. I was living in Germany when it came out, and we went to see it on the evening of September 11. I was kind of reeling at the time, we had just started to get news of what was happening in the afternoon, and neither me or my friends had tv or internet access at home, so we were all trying to piece together what was happening from the little bits of info we could find. I almost didn’t go to the movie, but got talked into it, and I will say the movie was engaging enough to transport me out of worrying about friends in New York and what might happen in the wake of the attacks.
Amélie is obviously not for everyone, but my god Amélie just feels so right to me. This move is bright, fun, whimsical and comfortable. The characters in the film are very colorful and they add so much to the storytelling and the world building of Amélie. Amélie herself is a very well written character with an exquisite imagination, and the story being told from her perspective allows for the line between reality and imagination to be expertly blurred. The movie was an amazing watch and definitely one I’ll remember for a very long time.
I’m kind of shocked that there’s no acknowledgment of this movie’s legacy as a poster child for white Frenchness (not necessarily in this article, just in the discourse at large). Given the director’s comments about the subject, it’s become hard for me to watch a movie I once adored for how obvious that agenda is.
Ok, I’ll admit it’s been a while since I’ve seen Amélie, and I understand that any movie can be viewed from a racial perspective, but even if the director is racist does that mean the story of Amélie is? Like even if that was the director’s agenda, if the movie can be viewed from a non racial perspective, which it can, then it’s still a nice movie to watch.
I mean, I get everyone has to draw the line for themselves somewhere, and I wouldn’t put Amélie on if anyone didn’t want to watch it, but if movies became hard to watch because I didn’t agree with the film makers’ views, there’d probably be very few films left for me to watch.
Admittedly it’s been a while since I threw this DVD on but didn’t Nino collect photo booth strips because one of his several jobs was a photo booth tech? I seem to recall that being a mystery Amelie had to solve.
The photos were of the photo booth tech. Taken and then discarded after the equipment was seen to work.
Ah shoot, you’re right! I should probably watch this again soon. It’s been a while. It was one of the first special edition DVDs I bought.
Was this the movie with the garden gnome going on holidays?
Cause if so it’s the only live-action movie I know that did something imaginative with a garden gnome that wasn’t they’re evil and want to kill you.
“According to Jeunet, the Academy held a grudge against Weinstein at that point because of his perceived shady campaigning practices.”Shady campaigning? That’s the worst thing Weinstein’s ever done!
You can actually draw a line between “shady campaigning practices” and “put in an position unimpeachable to abuse allegations” in that the moment he begins winning awards is the moment people start looking the other way because he’s winning awards. Not the most solid of lines, but it’s there.
If I may address the losing part and not so much the Weinstein of it all… Amelie was a frigging delightful movie that I loved and was a cultural sensation at the time. BUT, it lost to No Man’s Land, which I had also seen at the time. No Man’s Land, while forgotten, is a gut punch of a satirical film about war that was also amazingly good and is probably a movie that should be rediscovered as it’s just as relevant today. Suffice to say, as much as I loved Amelie, when No Man’s Land won, I was not disappointed with the result.
If I had more free time tonight, I’d say something in depth about how I connect with this movie differently after I realized I was autistic, since the titular character is certainly coded that way as well. Perhaps another time.