Amélie
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet Run Time: 122 min. Release Year: 2001 Language: French
Starring: Audrey Tautou, Lorella Cravotta, Mathieu Kassovitz, Rufus, Serge Merlin
Amélie (Audrey Tatou), the heroine of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s award-winning whimsical romance, is no ordinary young woman. A waitress in a Montmartre, Paris bar, Amélie observes people and lets her imagination roam free. One day, she suddenly finds her purpose in life: to solve other people’s problems. We follow her around a lovingly and vividly photographed Paris of saturated colors, as she engineers offbeat solutions to better her deserving co-workers, relatives and neighbors’ lives…Among them the concierge who spends her day sipping port while communing with a stuffed dog; Georgette, the hypochondriac newsdealer; and the “glass man”, who lives vicariously through a Renoir reproduction. Amélie’s mission to help others is rudely interrupted when she meets a strange, off-beat young man, Nino Quincampoix (Mathieu Kassovitz), who captures her interest, and sets her on a misson to do accomplish something for herself…in the most charming and complicated way possible.
“The result is hip nostalgia, a postmodern fairy tale in which faith is replaced by predestination or simple luck, and the universe proves, against all odds, to be a place of kindness and abiding love.” ~ Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal