amelie, amelie

Maybe I shouldn't like it, but there is something about Amelie that keeps me coming back. This girl so trapped in her own world, who really wants to do some good but is for all intents and purposes, rather hermetic, reminds me too much of myself.

Amelie Poulin (Audrey Tatou)  is a loner, a stone-skimmer with a gorgeous chestnut bob and is a helper who is able to help almost everyone but herself. She has been unlucky in love, as one rather funny scene informs, and seems almost afraid to reach out to find any real love or lasting love. But Amelie has been able to sneak by quietly. She has fooled many people, and they have bought her outgoing girl act, all that is save for the glass-man, who lives one floor down and has brittle bones as "dry as a skeleton" he says. He lives in his padded apartment where he paints Renoir over and over again, the same scene, always trying to capture the girl with the glass, who we will soon see represents our Amelie.

At it's core, Amelie is a story not just about a girl who is somewhat lost and lonely, but who has been so her whole life, starting with distant parents who were either too neurotic or too icy to show love. Amelie Poulin finds herself unable to connect one on one in any meaningful way and this film is about a kind of quest, for lack of a better word, to find a real and closer love. 

For now, Amelie lives in a world of colorful characters, mostly those who populate the Windmill café ·here she works. The trapeze artist who was dropped and had her leg shortened, the tobacconist who is allergic to everything and clearly a hypochondriac, the pining lover who feels jilted by one of the waitresses who he once dated and records her every laugh as some sing of "orgasmic delight" in other men.  Amelie will do her best to reconcile these characters; she will hook up the jilted lover with Georgette, the hypochondriac, she will find a box of boys that once belonged to a little boy and seek him out to return the gift that was buried in the wall of her apartment, she will show a blind man the world by describing every last sight, and more. But Amelie is incapable of helping herself. 

Soon, Amelie keeps crossing paths with a young man who has a rather curious hobby of picking up the ripped up photomaton pictures of others that are left behind. The refuse of photographs that he then pieces back together and places in an album. When he takes off after the photomaton repair man, he loses his album and it is found by Amelie. This album begins a kind of curious quest in which Amelie must of course, find the rightful owner, but not without playing some games first. Taking her own picture in the photomaton as evidence and pasting them all over the metro walls with messages, "Qui" "Quand" "Quoi" -- the who, when and what. In the meantime, she has her theories of the album and it's picture inhabitants. Perhaps they are of a man who is dying, she says, a big theme of hers, for Amelie is always seeing scenes of her own death, scenes which are darkly funny and in which she is featured as a kind of saint with the whole of Paris mourning her passing with parades and streamers form windows and long lines  of citizens who follow her casket. These are imaginings of course, but the film sequences that were put together for this film are brilliant and captivating and tell us a great deal abut how our main character sees herself or wishes to be seen -- as a kind of Mother Theresa, the saviour of the world.

Don't get me wrong; Amelie's intentions are all good. She does in fact help a fair number of people, she does have a good heart, but at the end of the day, Amelie is still unable to help herself and boy, doesn't that sound familiar. I watch this and think such a waste for such a beautiful girl (Audrey Tatou) to fritter away her time in this way and be so afraid of finding love or help for herself.  IN some ways, you could say easily that Amelie is a meddler. 

When the grocery man pisses her off, she breaks into his apartment and replaces his toothpaste with foot cream, replaces his slippers with the same style but two sizes too small, she makes he light bulbs buzz by placing a pin in the wire (do not try this at home). Amelie may have good reason; the grocer is not a kind man and treats his young and somewhat slow but kindly assistant as if he were a barn animal. But this is not Amelie's problem. Here, I struggle though. For if it is not Amelie's problem then whose problem is it; who will right the injustices of the world? Not that we can right them all, but like Amelie, she sets about to right the smaller ones, the things that she can change and lord knows, her means and methods are effective. By her deeds, Amelie manages to change the lives of many people in small ways, but in ways that count, yet at the end of the day, we sense this is still a diversion, a way of avoiding herself and avoiding her own needs that are seen so clearly by the prescient Glassman. Even Amelie's father, who has not left town since his wife, Amelies' mother has died, is free from Amelie's meddling.

One night, she steals his garden gnome that lives on a sort of shrine he has built to house his dead wives ashes. Amelie passes the gnome onto a flight attendant friend and the gnome travels all through the world and is photographed. Soon, postcards arrive, bearing the gnomes image in Moscow, England, all over the world -- but what is the message the father wonders. He just doesn't get it. Amelie tells him, Maybe he wanted to see the world. Of course, in time, the father will get his gnome back and the message will be clear and he will set out on his own adventures. But what about Amelie?

Amelie shows us a good life, and a good way to live; to do unto others, but what about how we do unto ourselves? In the end, she will find her true love -- he will pursue her even when she evades him. Even after the game she plays to capture him, to get his attention, after the posters she makes of the photomaton inmages, the messages written on her belly ("qui"), Amelie still can't face him. Thank god he's not the sort to give up easily and while we don't want anyone to be forced into a relationship they do not want, it is clear that the only thing stopping Amelie in this case is not lack of like, or even lack of love, but a clear and very present fear of connecting -- perhaps of being hurt. 

Her message seems to be, it's okay for her to help others, but by god, don't try to help me. Amelie does not want to see herself as she is, it is only through the efforts of the Glassman that Amelie will begin to see the signs -- through a tape he makes and sneaks inot her apartment (but only after she has done the same to him first), through is comments about "the girl with the glass" in the painting. "How she played alone" he says, "How she didn't play with others and preffered to be on her own..." These are hard things for Amelie to hear, but only because they are true. To understand herself, she msut first recognize that the girl in the painting, the girl with the class, is both of the group and outside of the group -- she is there, but not there in spirit. Her gaze is focused on something outside of the scene that we see in the painting. So where is Amelie's gaze? Focused on other people, but not focused on the now, on where she is.

This is a film worth seeing; yes, there are some art-house moments, but that doesn't bother me much because they are so well done. The video tapes that are passed between Glassman and Amelie are amazing -- the footage so old and rare that I've never seen it before, old blues singers, old scenes of the firsts of the Tour de France -- the montages themselves are truly amazing.  Also, and perhaps this is just my own liking of sensory things, there are some amazing sounds in the beginning. I think one of my favorite parts of the film is the credits with the various sound effects and fluttering. Here is a film full o such sensory things, and with a color palette that I've never seen in any other film -- there are greens and blues but everything is richly saturated, and this lends a certain quality to the film that otherwise wouldn't work so well. The dark hues lend a seriousness and a darkness to what could be otherwise construed as a light movie, which I some ways it is, but still, the main message here is still serious.

The film is subtitled, but note that the subtitles while good, are not entirely accurate, so some of the puns (which are the best parts of this film) are entirely lost, or at least, not quite as funny. The film is also dotted with small details that are hilarious -- the odd hobbies of the soon to be boyfriend, his recordings of weird laughs, etc. -- these are the details that make up a life and give this film its richness. Watch for many twists and turns, the odd little details that make all the difference, and see the richness of this film and the emptiness of the life of a girl who seems on the surface, just fine, because that is what she wants you to believe.

I'll also say that the film gets better with subsequent viewings, so if you didn't like it the first time, perhaps now is the time to give it another chance, unless you really hated it. Otherwise, I'd highly recommend it; it's a story about loneliness, love, generosity and giving in every way and learning how to accept what is given to you.  What better lesson to learn.