Amelie

Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amelie is a very entertaining, yet odd movie. This movie was filled with beautiful color, wonderful music, and very interesting characters, however, I had a difficult time following this movie. I felt that if I watched it again I would catch a lot of things that I missed. As I said, Amelie is a very entertaining movie with a lot of humor and the strangest things happening.

The audience finds out right away that Amelie is a very unique young girl. With fun music in the background, Amelie is shown making strange faces and doing very odd things to show her personality. Facial expressions are very important in Amelie, especially for those of us who do not speak French.

I had to giggle every time the narrator described a new character. It wasn't just the basics, it was every little flaw or weird fact about a person. This movie is very specific in explanations. After hearing what each character hates or loves, I realized that we all dislike it when something out of the ordinary happens, but it's life and we just don't notice those kinds of things. For example, the narrator said "she doesn't like to have her fingers all wrinkled by hot water" when explaining the character of Amelie's mother. I hate that too but never thought of it to be too big of a deal!

The way the director brought objects to life to become involved in the plot was very unique and entertaining. It added to the "weird" aspects of the film.

I felt that color was very important in Amelie. The whole movie color scheme seemed to be based on green, yellow, and red. I noticed that Amelie (Audrey Tautou) was mainly wearing red throughout the entire film from a pretty red dress to a nice red cardigan. Red is a very warm and passionate color. I think that Amelie wore red because of her search for love. Amelie wore green after she was misinformed about her friend going off with the man of her dreams, Nino (Mathieu Kassovitz). Green itself isn't important, perhaps, but the fact that she switched from red to another color.

Amelie seemed to have a very sad childhood with her mother dying and her father being very different, especially after his wife died. Amelie broke free when she left her childhood home to seek happiness in Paris. I was able to tell that Amelie was a very caring person. She was trying to find happiness in helping others. For instance, when Amelie found that box of mementos which belonged to someone who lived in her apartment a long time ago, she wanted to find him right away and return it to him. When she did find him, she didn't personally give it to him. The box was left in a phone booth for him to find. This goes to show that Amelie didn't want to take credit for his happiness, she simply wanted to bring back his childhood to him. Amelie was very interested in other people's lives, sometimes too interested.

I noticed that Amelie became very easily interested in different things. Amelie was especially curious about the bald man whose picture was in Nino's book multiple times. At first thinking he was dead and was afraid of being forgotten, she began to research and ended up finding out he was just a repair man doing his job.

I laughed so much during this movie. I especially enjoyed the scenes when Amelie fooled her neighbor by misplacing his items. Amelie is very unique in that she notices every small difference. When the camera zoomed in on her father's gnome, it showed her noticing a slug crawling on it.

Amelie discovered the man of her dreams one day at the photo booth. Immediately her heart started racing which brought back us back to Amelie's reaching out for her father's love, but the closest thing she got to that was a monthly medical check-up. Amelie was longing for any type of love. This was her second chance!

I immediately like Nino. He was a very good looking and interesting character, someone who I thought would be perfect for Amelie. It was easy to see that Amelie was very hesitant to speak to Nino. Amelie ends up playing games with Nino after he had lost his books of pictures. I could tell that Nino was very interested in who this "mystery woman" was, especially when he put up signs for her. I became so frustrated when Nino arrived at the cafe Amelie worked at and she wouldn't introduce herself!

I think that Amelie finally realized that providing happiness for others did not make her truly happy. In the end, Amelie found out that Nino was what she had needed all along after her neighbor emphasized that she needed to go after Nino and that she'd be crazy to let him go this time. I believe that the message of this story is that you cannot live your life through fantasies, you need to find something real for your happiness.

While Amelie is a comedy, she did triumph over adversity and work her way to a happy ending after a long search.