Title: Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain
English Title:
- Amélie
- The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain
Language: French
Year: 2001
Cast:
- Audrey Tautou
- Mathieu Kassovitz
- Rufus
- Lorella Cravotta
- Serge Merlin
- Jamel Debbouze
- Clotilde Mollet
- Claire Maurier
- Isabelle Nanty
- Dominique Pinon
- Artus de Penguern
- Yolande Moreau
- Urbain Cancelier
- Maurice Bénichou
- Michel Robin
SYNOPSIS
Innocent and naive Amélie Poulain, with her own sense of justice, decides to help those around her and along the way, discovers love.
REVIEW
In Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, or simply Amélie, the characters are introduced by enumerating their likes and dislikes. In addition, lead character Amélie Poulain is further introduced through what she considers as small pleasures in life (plunging her hand deep into a sack of grain, cracking crème brûlée with a teaspoon, and skipping stones on Canal St. Martin) and what she does to entertain herself such as asking silly questions about the world like "How many couples are having an orgasm now?".
I never really consciously thought about what I like and what I don't like before I watched this movie so if you suddenly asked me then to enumerate my likes and dislikes, I would definitely take a lot of time to think things through. After watching the movie, I decided that it's important to know myself and to be consciously aware of my likes and dislikes, what I consider as small pleasures in life, and what I find entertaining and amusing.
Amélie is such an intriguing character because she's so used to being alone that she doesn't know how to relate to other people. She's content in her solitude and it seems that she finds it hard to take the first step in getting to know people, although she has that desire to be a part of society and to cultivate relationships with others.
In her own quiet way, Amélie reunites a lost treasure box with its rightful owner, she tries to bring two unlikely people together, and she attempts to teach a mean bully a lesson by messing with his routine and his life.
What Amélie does were all intentional but I can't help but wonder how much of an impact people have on other people's lives, whether intentional or unintentional, such as introducing someone to his future husband or wife, or doing something to cause someone to lose his job.
When she found a photo album with several photo booth pictures of a man taken in different locations, Amélie and her neighbor Raymond Dufayel, also known as the Glass Man, tried to come up with explanations as to why the man kept taking pictures of himself and throwing the pictures away. Amélie and Mr. Dufayel formulated that it's like a ritual or he's scared of being forgotten so he used the photo booths to remind people what he looks like.
However, Amélie accidentally found out at the end of the movie that the man is actually the repairman for the photo booths so he's taking pictures to check that the photo booths are working properly after his repairs. It's quite funny how Amélie and the Glass Man tried to find a deeper meaning for something so trivial and ordinary.
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Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain
