Amelie

Rating:
Summary: One of the best movies
Review: I am your typical movie snob; it is the rare modern cinematic feature that provokes me to say that I would ever watch it again, much less to consider to do this. Amélie is by far and away one of my favorite movies. Its cinematography is absolutely fantastic, and then the story itself is breathtaking. Every time I watch this movie, it moves me to tears. This movie is, without a doubt, a masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: Amelie Never Escapes My Thoughts
Review: Amelie is at once so brilliant that it makes you either want to be the title character Amelie or at least live in Amelie's world. That world, as portrayed in this film, is charming and colorful; geuninely everything an alienated soul could want.

The film is set in a false Paris; that is, everything was digitally enhanced to make Montmarte and the surrounding area look even more beautiful in the film. Amelie's Paris is clean and bright, with Jeunet trying to give the area a 1940's Paris look. The music played throughout the film seems like it was also taken from the forties, sounding like old Victrola records of accordion music. Each set borrows from a Brazilian painter a tactic of using a strong, main color such as red and adding a splash of another color, such as blue. This technique not only provides for a sense of balance, but also gives the sets movement.

The cinematography of Amelie is a marvel, from the circular shots of Amelie skipping stones in the creek (one of her favorite stress relievers) to the fast-paced, fast-talking scene when Amelie clutches the arm of a blind man, describing the scenes of Montmarte as they briskly walk to the subway station. With the camera movement and the locations around Paris, a very definite sense of Amelie's world is conveyed - a charming, delightful world, indeed.

From the film's beginning, you learn that Amelie was deprived of affection as a child, due to the fact that her parents were both of the obsessive-compulsive nature. Amelie consequently grew into a lonely young woman, not having any playmates as a child and not being able to go to school because of a presumed medical condition. Thus, from her childhood, Amelie has created her own world in which to live and has grown afraid to look for love.

An event occurs in Amelie's life and she decides from that moment on to become a secret "do-gooder." If she cannot find happiness in her own life, she can at least provide some for other people. One of the most amazing persons Amelie comes across is an elderly recluse who lives in the apartment below her, known to all as the Glass Man. He is simultaneously eccentric and fascinating, not unlike Amelie herself. He has painted one particular painting of Renoir's once a year for twenty years, yet he still cannot perfect the way one of the subjects in the painting looks. The subject is a young woman, and she becomes a type of symbol in the conversations between Amelie and the Glass Man. The Glass Man can innately sense Amelie's loneliness, and also the fact that she has come across someone she instantly felt she knew her entire life and could easily grow to love.

That person is Nino, another eccentric whom Amelie comes across scraping out ripped-up photos out from under a photo booth. She feels an instant bond, and spends most of the movie conceiving stratagems on how to meet with Nino. It is these stratagems, and Amelie's adventures toward making people happy that make the film so wonderful, so unique. The details in this film are extraordinary, and take more than one viewing to catch, as non-French speaking viewers also have to rapidly read the subtitles.

The Glass Man encourages Amelie to meet Nino, who seems just as lonely as Amelie. Amelie describes the young woman in the painting as being "different" from the others, and that is what seems to make Amelie nervous about meeting Nino. What if she is too "different" for him? Why not continue her life as it is? Amelie should meet Nino, the film conveys to us, because it is in the pursuit of happiness. Amelie needs to give herself some of the happiness that she brought to others in the film.

The plot is so quick and witty, always moving forward, containing so much ingenuity that it leaves you wondering why all films cannot be this good. The characters are charismatic, seemingly real people that anyone could meet. Yet, the film shows us, each character has their own little quirk or uniqueness about them that should be valued, although at times the discovery of this spark can be slow. That is a lesson about human beings that we should all take from the absolute work of art that is Amelie.

Rating:
Summary: French fairytale at it's best!
Review: This is one of those vintage refreshing movies. It was recommended to me by a friend over diner (thanks, Lot) and I went to the cinema to find out what the fuzz was about!

Boy, it's a gem! From the weird, swift and wonderful introduction to the heroes and heroines to the speedy camerawork and the unfolding of the delicious story.
Amelie is a young parisian woman who's been wrongly diagnosed for a heartdisease by her father as an infant and therefore she spent most of her youth indoors.

Finally on her own feet, she finds herself influencing the lives of other people. In this 21st century fairytale Amelie finally falls in love and goes about it in her own personal way!

It's brilliant! It's original! It's energetic! Go on, see for yourselves!

Rating:
Summary: Stereotypic French film
Review: Are all French films the same? This plot was predictable and not that enticing. I didn't find this uplifting (If this is uplifting, I don't want your life.) either, but was amazed at how many people there are with no life. If this is the French idea of sex, how boring! If this is a typical French life, ditto!

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic !
Review: One of my favorite movies of all time.. This film gives you hope, happiness and joy to your heart. It's funny and dramatic at the same time. It didn't win an oscar out of the multiple nominations that it had, but i think at least this film deserved the foreing language award.

Rating:
Summary: Excellence in Film
Review: And the Oscar goes to . . .unfortunately not this superb work. This must be the best movie I have seen in my entire life. The theme, humor, cinematography and acting is all first-rate. Combining an occasional randomness that reminds one of one's own life with the clever presentation of its message, the result is an absolute masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty in Green
Review: A beautiful cinema exercise, especially fine in terms of application of digital effects & [green] processing to something NOT scifi/war/action, but a saccharin mess/miss as a fable or narrative. Or picaresque imagistic collage or whatever anyone wants to call it. Industrial cubic zirconia? Attempts at fable, especially high romantic comic fable, rise or fall by ringing true or false. Ring is subjective. Those entering darkened mall theaters seeking mysteriously empowered mischievious green fairy civility might feel/argue that it passes? But it's a video now & it's Disney/Shyamalan/Spielberg, [para-]soap operatic NOT dramatic, tightly controlled/artificial NOT loosely natural/inviting, seriously charming self-indulgence in the service of something archly/Frenchly infantile? Occasional flash refs to earthbound sex & the vagaries/glitches of mating are perfunctory. Amelie is Pollyanna with Tinkerball traces? Titania denatured, minus flashy temper & capacity for selfish caprice? Jeunet may feel that one must choose to make either a nice (positive is his usual English word) OR a NOT nice movie, that a natural mix is just too difficult/confusing for movie audiences? Perhaps he's right?

Jeunet claims quasi-autobiographical basis for tales/episodes (other than the old globetrotting gnome trick), & DVD bonus stuff provides all sorts of hints/clues about why Jeunet, like many other auteurs, might be wise to depend more upon others for stories/scripts? The game SEEMS Puckish enough on its surface, but it gets worse as it goes, loses its force as Amelie herself is dolled up/out/down past either traditional fairy/witch or merely human, finally centered in an other-obliterating way? All males are caricatured. Amelie's eventual love object Nino is especially weak, pure cipher, as if projecting Amelie & girls from his right brain exhausted Jeunet entirely. No real Bottom, so neither here nor there, neither [humble/bad/sweet/stupid] play within play nor whole complex comedy? Shakespeare himself didn't have the hubris to aspire to DIRECTLY write/stage Bottom's bottomless dream? What we feel after a successful romantic comedy is an adult amazement, the effect of a mix, shaken not machined, of separate unblendably dissonant players/worlds. It can be approached ONLY by indirection, interplay? Amelie develops into Shirley Temple King Kong, way too cute/gigantic for anyone/thing else to escape her sway? NOT actress error. Writer/director (or auteur) goof. Streamed froth. Waste of technical talent, VERY Shyamalan-like.

Quite pretty, though, with many gracefully framed shots of green Paris. If you can stand the bunny & teddy bear cloud effects & Jeunet's clear wish to control/do everything, you'll have fun.

Rating:
Summary: "Amélie" Is One of the Best Films from 2001!
Review: A brilliant comedic love story using color enhancement and other digital special effects, "Amélie" catapults the viewer into the world of Amélie Poulain from the time of her birth, when she is 6 years old (played by Flora Guiet), and in her early 20's (played by Audrey Tautou) when she is working as a waitress at the Two Windmills Café and living in the Parisian neighborhood of Montmartre. Being rather shy, her life is rather solitary and private until she discovers a tin box hidden behind a bathroom tile in her apartment on the night that Princess Diana is killed. The tin box contained keepsakes of a young boy who had lived in the same apartment 50 years earlier. Amélie decides that she must find the child who is now a 50+ year old man and return his box. From that point, Amélie's life is never the same as she begins a crusade to do nice things for other people to help them, including her father; but she prefers to remain completely anonymous. Ultimately, she is forced to confront her shyness after she falls in love with Nino Quincampoix (played by Mathieu Kassovitz) and can no longer remain anonymous.

I had no difficulty reading the English subtitles as "Amélie" is in French and no English-dubbed version is available. In the widescreen DVD version, the subtitles are placed in the black area below the picture so that they don't interfere with the film. Also, the letters are large so that the subtitles are easy to read.

My favorite part on the the second disk in the 2-disk DVD set are the interviews with the director/writer Jean-Pierre Jeunet, but it also includes cast auditions, out-takes, a story-board comparison, home movies and a scrapbook.

I am very pleased to own a copy of "Amélie" in my DVD film collection!

Rating:
Summary: A beautiful, life-affirming joy of a film
Review: This film is such a work of art, it almost sings with pleasure. Carving out a beautiful story of truth, happiness and magic, Amelie is almost a dreamland in its magical fairytale of kindness. The lead character - played perfectly by Tattou as the pretty, shy, kind brunette - is a sort of dream girl in her overwhelming desire to make things better for people.

In this the film is quirky and interesting, unearthing the raw emotion behind every part of the plot, in its fairytale-like way of just making things better in such a simple but wonderful way that we all long for, this is every magical wonderland of a story brought up to date and made relevant - set in Paris it is a sensory experience to perfection - and is quirkyly heartwarming.

I can't sing the praises of this film enough - don't worry about it being in subtitles - you would be hard-pressed to care: this is an utterly beautiful magical land which can bring tears to your eyes. If only there were more people like Amelie in the world, we could make things so much better for all people.

Rating:
Summary: Great movie and cool DVD case!
Review: This is a light-hearted and fun movie, and the DVD and case are uniquely designed and packaged. You get two DVD's in a special cardboard case, which has a nice slip cover. Good product all around.