Amélie

Wow. Wowowowowowowow. What a movie. Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie is a masterpiece through and through. As someone who wants to make his own films eventually, I sat here watching this film and noting the camera transitions and how Jeunet shoots scenes and thought “my god, this is exactly how I picture films in my head.” The film itself is a romantic comedy regarding the young Amélie and her cat-and-mouse game with the eccentric photo collector Nino. However, I don’t think that’s the major point of Amélie the film or Amélie the character. Amélie likes the small things in life - she skips stones, she dips her hand into grain sacks, she lives for the simple things… but then she discovers a new passion: making the people around her happy, and she sets out to do just that. She helps reunite a man with his estranged daughter, she convinces her widower father to travel the world after stealing his garden gnome, she helps a meek shopkeeper assistant with the bullying he receives from his boss, and she even plays matchmaker for her coworker all in secret. To sum it up, Amélie is like Batman, if Batman were a French woman working in the daylight for the benefit of the people around her without harming anyone. I love the cinematography here - they intentionally color-toned the film to have a certain feel to it and I think the yellow hues certainly work here. I also love the red apartment setup of Amélie, it’s very distinctive and is very reminiscent of the work of Wes Anderson. It’s very nice and gives off a friendly vibe. The narration is also well done. A good chunk of it is insignificant in what the narrator establishes, but it feels like a necessary part of the story nonetheless. On top of that, the first fifteen minutes of this film are wild. I swear my jaw dropped a few times - I won’t say at what, but you’ll see if you watch this film. Unfortunately, Amélie currently isn’t available on any streaming platform in the US and I struggled to even find a physical copy that worked on a US DVD player. You’ll have to find it through other means. And that (along with being snubbed at the Oscars in all the categories it was nominated for) is a shame, because it genuinely is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.