{"id":1396,"date":"2008-09-24T01:57:47","date_gmt":"2008-09-24T06:57:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/?p=1396"},"modified":"2008-09-24T16:35:11","modified_gmt":"2008-09-24T21:35:11","slug":"fb100-92-amelie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/fb100-92-amelie\/","title":{"rendered":"FBTop100 #92: Amelie"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is part of a project<\/a> to watch the Film Bloggers’ 100 Favorite Non-English Films<\/a>.<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

\"AMELIE-20\"<\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Am\u00c3\u00a9lie
\n<\/strong>France 2001; dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
\nstarring: Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz
\nscreened 4\/6\/08; DVD<\/em><\/p>\n

Previous Viewing Experience<\/strong>: I’ve seen this at least four times, but most of them were pretty soon after it came out on DVD, so it’s probably been four or five years.\u00c2\u00a0 Wow, that makes me feel old.<\/p>\n

Previous Reactions<\/strong>: I pretty much fell in love with this movie when I first saw it (hence the seeing it again so often so soon).\u00c2\u00a0 The colors, the music, the quirk, the charm.\u00c2\u00a0 Mostly the colors, if I’m honest.<\/p>\n

Brief Synopsis<\/strong>: Amelie Poulain lives and works in Montmartre, but doesn’t connect very deeply with other people.\u00c2\u00a0 When she finds a long-lost box of toys and successfully finds the overjoyed owner, she decides to do random acts of kindness (and meanness, in one case) – one of which may lead to romance if she doesn’t chicken out first.<\/p>\n

Response<\/strong>:\u00c2\u00a0 Interesting reaction this time. I’m still charmed by the film, and for all the same reasons as before. But I found myself also a little disappointed at its obviousness. Which I think is a function of having seen several Krzysztof Kieslowski films over the past year. Jeunet’s use of vibrant color seems directly borrowed from Kieslowski’s later films (the French ones), and since the cinematography is one of my favorite things about both Amelie<\/em> and Kieslowski’s work, I couldn’t help comparing them in my head. And Kieslowski is better. Amelie’s problem is that she’s afraid of connecting meaningfully with other people. That’s why she spends more time pulling pranks and tricking everyone else in the story (whether for their good or ill) rather than concentrate on her own life.\u00c2\u00a0 Ultimately, that’s why she constructs elaborate schemes and false identities that keep her in contact with yet also distanced from Bobo. And that’s great, it’s a fine storyline. But then Jeunet introduces a brittle painter who can’t quite capture one girl’s expression in the Renoir he’s copying. Why? Because she’s in a group of people and yet not connected to them. Over and over the fact that this girl and Amelie are the same is reiterated. Over and over the painter explicitly pushes Amelie to take the risk, to open herself up to others. Again, not a bad thing in and of itself, but Kieslowski takes a similar storyline of people who have cut themselves off from the world emotionally in Red<\/em><\/a> and carries it out with much greater subtlety and ambiguity. Perhaps that’s why Amelie<\/em> is #92 on this list and Red<\/em> is down at #39.<\/p>\n

I still love Amelie<\/em>, don’t get me wrong. It’s delightful, and it remains one of the two or three best introductions to foreign films for the subtitle-phobic. But it’s a gateway drug to world cinema, and if you like it, move on to the harder stuff.<\/p>\n

Overall Rating: Well Above Average<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is part of a project to watch the Film Bloggers’ 100 Favorite Non-English Films. Am\u00c3\u00a9lie France 2001; dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet starring: Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz screened 4\/6\/08; DVD Previous Viewing Experience: I’ve seen this at least four times, but most of them were pretty soon after it came out on DVD, so it’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[1005,1007,724,1006],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1372,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/fbtop100-93-the-blue-angel\/","url_meta":{"origin":1396,"position":0},"title":"FBTop100 #93: The Blue Angel","author":"Jandy","date":"September 24, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This post is part of a project to watch the Film Bloggers' 100 Favorite Non-English Films. Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel) Germany 1931; dir: Josef von Sternberg starring: Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich screened 7\/5\/08; New Beverly Cinema Previous Viewing Experience: Never seen it, nor anything else directed by von\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1653,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/favorite-films-one-letter-at-a-time\/","url_meta":{"origin":1396,"position":1},"title":"Favorite Films, One Letter at a Time","author":"Jandy","date":"November 7, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I rarely organize my collections alphabetically, at least not as the major organizational tool, since the letter the title starts with is usually less meaningful than the year it was made or the genre that it's in. 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Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt) Germany 1998; dir: Tom Tykwer starring: Franka Potente, Moritz Bliebtreu screened 1\/28\/08, DVD \"I wish I was a heartbeat that never comes to rest.\" Previous\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":805,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/new-project-watching-the-film-bloggers-100\/","url_meta":{"origin":1396,"position":4},"title":"New Project: Watching the Film Blogger’s 100","author":"Jandy","date":"November 15, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I wanted to catch up on the recap posts before I started this new film-watching project. I don't really know why, because they're mostly unrelated. But ah well. Goals don't have to have extrinsic meaning to be useful. Anyway, now I have caught up, so here's my project. A few\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1210,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/great-directors-catch-up-post\/","url_meta":{"origin":1396,"position":5},"title":"Great Directors: Catch-Up Post","author":"Jandy","date":"July 22, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I admit to choosing who gets to be a \"great director\" with some level of arbitrariness. Generally, it'll be directors whose oevre I'm trying to work through, thus reviews\/reactions in this category will end up being something of a series as I watch more and more films by a given\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}