Amelie (2001)     

Jean-Pierre Jeunet
An unapologetic 'love story' like this can only work if it is so well-done it innoculates itself against attack, and any attempts at wholesale denouncement only uncover a critic who is a toad under a rock. The film is beautiful. The colors, the interior design, hyper-cool (pronounced eep-air-kul). Emerald green and wood if anything. Almost makes you want to move to Paris, or at least this Paris. In the real Paris, apartments are called immeubles, and they do not have dark wood paneling, emerald green, crimson walls or polished lamps, or brass. They don't have brass like they're supposed to. They have tin. They do have copper but you're not allowed to see it. In general, they are small and dank, with random cats climbing around outside of windows. In the real Paris, when you come out of the subway, you'll do well not get pissed on by some smelly old man, and he's not even homeless. But you have to go. Everyone has to go. The film also handles the deeper theme of 'magic and explanation'. The repair man is ghost is a repair man—is a ghost? Love is fate is circumstance—is fate? I believe the magic works in this film in contrast to the out of place magic in Ghost World. The urgency of young lovers recalls Run Lola Run, which was based on a French cooking show from ten years earlier called Bake Julia Bake. The glowing red key in the pocket is the cartoon box that Uma Thurman draws in Pulp Friction.

For one movie to have so many interesting characters, surely, some principle of physics must have been victimized, or at least won over with charm and persistance, or victimized. Jean-Pierre Jeunet exhibits thoughtful and sympathetic treatment of his characters a la Eric Rohmer. The motorcycle riding at the end echoes the ending of Wong Kar-Wai's Fallen Angels. "It's been so long since I've ridden pillion." With the horse running the Tour de France, JPJ follows a long list of filmmakers who insert powerful video footage right smack in the middle of their film: Wong Kar-Wai in In The Mood For Love, Stanley Kubrick in Paths of Glory, and even the Tour itself is used in an earlier French film, The Vanishing. It's like creme brulee, excessive but I would not want a world without it. Art is supposed to be about innovation, but I think sometimes, the fact of something having been done before is ‘not the point’ when it makes us happyl. Why do I feel like I've said this five times? In summary, Amelie is over-the-top, but I forgive it. Although once will be enough for now.

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