Amelie (2001)

“Amelie has a strange feeling of absolute harmony. It's a perfect moment. A soft light, a scent in the air, the quiet murmur of the city. A surge of love, an urge to help mankind overcomes her.” 

            I cannot remember the first time I watched Amélie. I must have seen it when I was taking French in school because quite a number of years ago I bought the DVD. I can actually remember buying the DVD like it was yesterday.  Ever since I bought the DVD and watched it I have not seen Amélie since. I watched it with new eyes and the mind of a movie lover. Amélie was just as fantastic as I remembered it.

            The movie is about a woman named Amélie Poulain (Audrey Tautou). She grew up a lonely child because her doctor father thought she had a heart condition. Since she did not get a chance to go to school and make friends so she had to use her imagination. Now as a grown up Amélie has a job in Paris at a café called The Two Windmills.

            One night she drops the cap to a bottle she was holding and the cap rolls to a tile on the floor knocking it loose. Amélie removes the loose tile and discovers a tin box full of old toys. Amélie decides to find out who lived in her apartment during the fifties. She finds out the man’s name and manages to track him down. Without meeting the man Amélie returns his old box of toys to him. The man walks into the café where she works and he talks about how this box as made him happy and how this makes him want to reconnect with his daughter and see his grandson.

            This event makes Amélie want to help others around her. She helps a woman she works with find a man who helps her get her mind off of being  hypochondriac, she helps her superintendent of her building find closer over the death of her husband twenty years before. The most important person Amélie helps is a man named Nino who collects torn photographs from photo booths in train stations.

            There are so many stories and situations in this movie that it would be too long to explain them all and it is more fun to watch the movie than have it explained.

            Every cast member was perfect. No one could have played Amélie any better than Audrey Tautou. With Tautou in the main role you can believe her character is a naïve woman with a wild imagination and a big heart.

            What I love about Amélie is how it takes you into an imaginary world in Paris. Paris is the dream of millions. So many idealize the city as this fantastic bright place of love and captures the imagination. The colors and the story help to bring this Paris of imagination to life.

            Amélie not only one of the best French movies ever to be made but one of the best all around movies ever made. You truly do feel so much better after have watched this not just because of the story but by how well it was created from the acting to the direction to the lighting. Amélie is a movie I feel anyone with a heart and anyone who says they love movies should see. Amélie for two hours and two minutes let you escape into the Paris and a world of imagination you did not know you needed and wanted to escape to.