A classic French romantic comedy starring Audrey Tautou.
A waitress from Montmartre is looking for happiness while bringing it to others in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s fairy tale that received five Oscar nominations and is number 87 in the BBC’s list of the 100 best films of the 21st century.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet first received acclaim for the César-winning animated shorts Le Manège (1981) and Foutaises (1989). His Amélie is a kind of a living animation set in a Paris that has never existed. Like Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge released the same year, Amélie presents a somewhat gentrified picture of the French capital (it took the crew some time to paint over the graffiti in the key filming locations). Adding to the impressive scope of genres covered in his previous films—from a black comedy (Delicatessen, 1991) to a surrealist fantasy (The City of Lost Children, 1995) and a sci-fi horror (Alien Resurrection, 1997), Jeunet made a romcom with an Altman-style multiple-story narrative that echoed the second part in Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express (1994).
The role of the eccentric waitress made the 25-year-old Audrey Tautou, already well-known in France after Venus Beauty Institute (1999), an international star and a national treasure. After Amélie, Tautou starred in the thriller Dirty Pretty Things (2002) by Stephen Frears and the biopic Coco Before Chanel (2009) and collaborated with Jean-Pierre Jeunet on the romantic war film A Very Long Engagement (2004). Amélie also brought international acclaim to the winner of three Césars Mathieu Kassovitz, who was already well-known in Europe both as an actor (See How They Fall by Jacques Audiard) and director (La Haine). Yann Tiersen’s accordion melodies for the film have become in the collective unconscious inseparably associated with Paris.
The film will be screened in French with Russian subtitles
Amélie
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
France, Germany, 2001. 123 min. 18+