Movie Review: Amelie

Amélie

(2001)
Directed by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Soundtrack by: Yann Tiersen

 ★★★★☆





I've always been an advocate of foreign films. There's something about the language barrier that has always drawn me in and kept me intrigued. Of these films, I've seen bad ones, and I've seen good ones. Amelie is definitely one of those films that I would rate on a higher scale than others. It's a mystically charming movie, full of whimsical adventures and goofy scenes. The movie, as a whole, is well put together. The cinematography, while it was slightly difficult for me to enjoy fully because I was enjoying it from a Netflix stream, was really quite lovely. All the colors molded together well, and all the characters were very quirky.

The main character is this girl in her early twenties named Amelie Poulian, who is played by Audrey Tautou, and she's this very innocent, naive and awkward character. The easiest way for me to put it, is that she's more like a social outcast with her own "sense of justice". She goes around fixing the problems of others, really, in cute and bizarre ways after stumbling upon a metallic box that was hidden away in her apartment. Her co-workers, the man from the little grocery outlet in front of her building, and of course the photobooth guy.

I think one of the reasons I've really come to love this movie, even after only seeing it once, was because of how well I related to Amelie. You always grow fond of the things you have some connection with, I suppose, and this is definitely the case with Amelie. Dreamers have to find their own way in life, because they're not like normal people who can carry about reality. They're whimsical people, who float through the world seeing things not as everyone else, but simply in a different way. They dream of things that happen, how things will become. They dream of things most people don't. I found myself in Amelie tonight, with her charming smile and her goofy wardrobe, as she gallivanted through people's lives trying to change and fix things from a distance.

There was one particular part in the movie I loved the most, after she was helping her father. She was asked, who would help you? Or something similar. She replied with,

"It's better to help people than a garden gnome."

That thought process of helping other people while disregarding your own problems is something I just simply related to well.

I could recommend this movie to everyone and anyone. It's charming. It's really, and I know I've used this word a lot, but it's full of whimsy, it's full of character. It's a quirky romantic comedy about a girl who seeks her own justice and finds love in the process. Jean-Pierre Jeunet did an unbelievably fantastic job directing thsi film, and don't even get me started on the soundtrack, that was done by Yann Tiersen. The music couldn't possibly have matched up with a movie more perfectly than this. Like I said previously, the whole movie is completely well put together, actors, filming and music wise, and I can't say that I'd ever grow tired of this movie. It's just too cute, honestly.