Amelie Timeline

1.  We are introduce to an idyllic Paris with seemingly insignificant details – bluebottles flying, glasses dancing
2. Title sequence with Amelie indulging in childhood activities – eating strawberries from fingers, creating a face with her hand, making noises using the top of a wine glass, spinning coins etc.
3. Meet Amelie’s mother and father we find out their Likes / Dislikes
4. We see Amelie as a six year old. Her father treats her like a patient and her mother like

   a student. As Amelie get excited with contrast from her father her heart beats fast – he diagnoses her as having a heart defect and declares her unfit for school.
5. Amelie resorts to a childhood where her imagination runs riot, she thinks records are like pancakes, imagines playing doctors with monsters and has a suicidal goldfish as her only friend – whom she then has to set free. (On a bridge we later see her skimming stones)
6. Amelie takes pictures with a used camera – again her imagination is clear with clouds becoming rabbits and bears. Following a crash a neighbour makes her think it is her photos that caused the crash. When she sees the news she thinks her camera has caused major accidents. Realising she’s been tricked she gets her own back by ruining the football.
7. Amelie’s mother is killed by a suicidal tourist. Dad becomes a recluse
8. Forward to Amelie as a young adult – working is Les Deux Moulin (Two Windmills) in Montmartre
9. We meet her co-workers, a Former Circus performer, a hypochondriac, a rejected lover, an airhostess .
10. On her way to visit her father she offers money to a homeless man who replies, ‘No Thankyou, I don’t work on Sundays.’
11. We see Amelie’s Likes / Dislikes. Plunging hand into grain, breaking Crème Brule, skimming stones, We learn relationships have been a disappointment for her.
12. We meet the glass man (Dufayel) – his bones are so brittle he can’t leave. He films a clock on a camera as he is unable to wind up his own, he paints recreations of famous paintings  - a link to the artists of Montmartre,
13. When she hears of Princess Diana’s Death she drops a bottle top which reveals the location of a hidden box – left by a former inhabitant of the house. She vows to find the owner.
14. She asks Madeleine, the concierge of the apartment who used to live there. Madeleine tells of how her husband left her. Before this he used to write her letters.
15. Amelie then sees Collingnon, the grocer to find out who lived in her apartment. He is mean about his assistant Lucien. Collingnon sends her to his parents They give her the name Bredoteau .
16. She walks along an empty subway, containing only a blind man and sees Nino rummaging under a photobooth. We see also that Nino had a tough childhood – bullied by his peers.
17. 
    

Academic Critique

She tries to keep her life within the world of childhood pleasures, notably through playing games.

Although she is physically no longer a child, her attitude shows that she is scared of stepping into an adult world.

It has been said that her character is ‘articulated around the trauma of a lost childhood’

Amelie is inhibited. She enjoys being around people but is pathologically shy and withdrawn, to the point of sometimes

becoming transparent. This is evident in the scene when she first meets Nino at the station, or on her encounter with

Bretodeau in the bar, where she chokes in her drink because he addresses her directly.

She prefers mediated (rather than in person) communication:

This is shown through Videotapes, fliers, cryptic notes, photographs or anonymous phone calls.

She also uses a telescope to remain distant form others and even wears costumes to conceal her own identity.

  

Anonymity is key to many of Amelie’s interactions. She tricks her childhood neighbour by hiding on the roof and pranks

Collingon by sneaking into his flat. When Nino seeks her out and asks ‘Is this you?’ whilst holding her poster, she

denies it.

The film lingers on the small aspects of everyday lie which can be universally related to. This has been said to be a

characteristic of ‘Petisme’ or ‘paying homage to little things and pleasures’. Characters are in tern identified by these

small pleasures and idiosyncrasies. For Amelie’s character it’s through the colours of red and green, collecting pebbles or feeling grain.

Amelie

Production
}Full Title – ‘Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain ‘
}Director  -  Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen, City of Lost Children)
}Released 2001
}Starring: Audrey Tautou (Amelie) and Mathieu Kassovitz  (Nino)

Setting
}Set in Montmarte, Paris (an area famed for artists [Picasso, Monet, Dali, Van Gogh] nightclubs [Moulin Rouge] and the Basillica of the Sacre Coeur
}Based around a fictional Café: The Two Windmills


Characters
}Amelie
}Nino
}Raphael Poulain (Amelie’s Dad)
}Amandine Poulain
}Raymond Dufayel (Glass Man)
}Lucien  (Grocer’s Assistant
}Georgette (Hypochondriac)
}Joseph (Obsessive Man)
}Madeleine Wallace  (Lady with Letters)
}Collignon (Grocer)
}Bretodeau (Boy with the treasure)


OSCARS Award Nominations
}Best Art Direction
}Best Cinematography
}Best Foreign Language Film, France
}Best Original Screenplay
}Best Sound


Style
Cinéma du look was a French film movement. It referred to films that had a slick visual style and a focus on young, alienated character.
Jeunet’s background was in animation and this can be seen in the fantasy style colours and visual style that is used.
There is a bitter-sweet tone to the film. The black humour makes even the sad moments comical.


Themes
}Innocence / Simplicity
}Childhood
}Happiness
}Outsiders


Innocence and simplicity
}Throughout the film we discover the simple things in life that the characters take pleasure in.
}The film is an idealised version of reality – its how we’d like things to be – Clean, Grafitti free, relaxed etc
}Even the music suggest the film will lack the gritty nature of life.


Happiness
}Both the audience and characters all get to experience Amelie’s brand of Happiness.
}In the end, It is the Glass man who returns the favour to Amilie.
}Amelie herself has several ‘daydream’ sequences where she imagines where her life is taking her. These provide reality checks to steer her on the right path.


Childhood.
}The entire opening sequences give an insight into Amelie’s childhood and suggests it is the reason why Amelie has grown up to be the person she is.
}Nino’s childhood was the antithesis of Amelie’s
}The simple pleasures of adulthood minor the simple pleasures of childhood.


Outsiders
}The characters could all be considered ‘outsiders’
}Their flaws and quirks place them outside the normal world.
}Regardless, the film reminds us to make the most of life “To a kid time drags, all of a sudden you are fifty”