Amélie (2001)
Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (original title)

Amelie, an innocent and naive girl in Paris, with her own sense of justice, decides to help those around her and along the way, discovers love.

Director:

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Writers:

Guillaume Laurant (scenario), Jean-Pierre Jeunet (scenario),

Stars:

Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Rufus

Top 250 #67 | Nominated for 5 Oscars. Another 54 wins & 50 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Audrey Tautou	...	Amélie Poulain
Mathieu Kassovitz	...	Nino Quincampoix
Rufus	...	Raphaël Poulain
Lorella Cravotta	...	Amandine Poulain
Serge Merlin	...	Raymond Dufayel
Jamel Debbouze	...	Lucien
Clotilde Mollet	...	Gina
Claire Maurier	...	Madame Suzanne - la patronne du café
Isabelle Nanty	...	Georgette
Dominique Pinon	...	Joseph
Artus de Penguern	...	Hipolito
Yolande Moreau	...	Madeleine Wallace
Urbain Cancelier	...	Collignon
Maurice Bénichou	...	Dominique Bretodeau
Michel Robin	...	Mr. Collignon

Storyline

Amélie is a story about a girl named Amélie whose childhood was suppressed by her Father's mistaken concerns of a heart defect. With these concerns Amélie gets hardly any real life contact with other people. This leads Amélie to resort to her own fantastical world and dreams of love and beauty. She later on becomes a young woman and moves to the central part of Paris as a waitress. After finding a lost treasure belonging to the former occupant of her apartment, she decides to return it to him. After seeing his reaction and his new found perspective - she decides to devote her life to the people around her. Such as, her father who is obsessed with his garden-gnome, a failed writer, a hypochondriac, a man who stalks his ex girlfriends, the "ghost", a suppressed young soul, the love of her life and a man whose bones are as brittle as glass. But after consuming herself with these escapades - she finds out that she is disregarding her own life and damaging her quest for love. Amélie then ...

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Plot Keywords:

Love | Waitress | Garden Gnome | Happiness | Hypochondriac | 

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Taglines:

One person can change your life forever.

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Genres:

Comedy | Romance

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for sexual content

Details

Official Sites:

Pro Kino GmbH [de]

Country:

France Germany

Language:

French Russian

Release Date:

25 April 2001 (France)

Also Known As:

Amélie

Filming Locations:

France

Box Office

Budget:

FRF 77,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

$2,069 (Iceland) (8 February 2002)

Gross:

$33,201,661 (USA) (28 June 2002)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Claudie Ossard Productions, Union Générale Cinématographique (UGC), Victoires Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

122 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital

Color:

Black and White Color (Duboicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

With the exception of a brief phone call where Amelie gives information to Nino, the two leads do not exchange a single word during the entire film.

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Goofs

At the end of the film when she's imagining Nino going out to Collignon's for yeast, and rustling the hanging beads at her kitchen door, the cat shouldn't be in the apartment to do that. The stewardess returned with the gnome from her latest trip at least a day earlier, and she would have picked the cat up then.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Narrator: On September 3rd 1973, at 6:28pm and 32 seconds, a bluebottle fly capable of 14,670 wing beats a minute landed on Rue St Vincent, Montmartre. At the same moment, on a restaurant terrace nearby, the wind magically made two glasses dance unseen on a tablecloth. Meanwhile, in a 5th-floor flat, 28 Avenue Trudaine, Paris 9, returning from his best friend's funeral, Eugène Colère erased his name from his address book. At the same moment, a sperm with one X chromosome, belonging to ...

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Crazy Credits

In the opening credits, the girl playing Amélie as a child is shown doing various things. If you give a careful look at these activities, you'll find they illustrate the credits shown at the same time.

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Connections

References Rear Window (1954)

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Soundtracks

"Comptine d'un autre été: La démarche"
Composed and Performed by Yann Tiersen

User Reviews

Finds its charm in the little things

'Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain' finds its charm in the little things. The story about Amélie (Audrey Tautou) is a modern day fairy tale and that is exactly how it looks the entire film.

We have a wonderful story about Amélie who decides to help people around her, making them happy. Not by doing great big things or giving money, but by little things. She helps her father by making him believe that his gnome from the garden is on a trip around the world, she helps a lonely neighbor by just visiting him, she helps a stranger by returning something she found in her home. On the way she falls in love with Nino (Mathieu Kassovitz) who's hobby it is to collect photos from automatic photo booths. Photos that were tossed away because people thought they didn't look good enough. He puts all those photos and pieces of photos in a big book. There is a little mystery in the book as well, of course I will not spoil that for you. The story is not only sweet and charming, it has some great moments of comedy as well.

The movie looks colorful and bright almost constantly. Even the sad parts from Amélie's life, her youth for example, look almost strangely happy. In this world, Paris actually, Audrey Tautou is the perfect inhabitant. She has one of those faces that seem to smile the entire time. She looks like she just pulled a joke and she is waiting for you to find out what it is. In a way her character is really doing that here so it does not feel strange.

In short 'Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain' is charming, funny, romantic bright and full of life. This is the perfect lighthearted movie.