‘One person can change your life forever’. Well, more precisely, one film. Le Fabuleux Destin D’Amélie Poulain is a masterpiece fusion of French aesthetics and gritty philosophy. Winning 51 film awards worldwide including 4 Césars along with 46 nominations – 4 of those Oscar nominations – Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (A Very Long Engagement, Delicatessen) catapulted Amélie to overwhelming overnight and international success, creating what is arguably the best French film ever made.
The storyline is typically French in its subtlety and drawn-out pace. The film follows the main character Amélie Poulain (Audrey Tautou) over a period of her life as she desperately searches for some sort of meaning. Constantly looking for love, Amélie is caught up in her extraordinary imagination, her childish love of life and her burning desire to enrich the lives of those around her. The underpinning theme throughout is that of the interplay between humankind, the physical world around us and our curiosity of its little pleasures. Amélie is unparalleled escapism.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a self-taught director, self-evident in the untamed nature of his films. He immerses himself mainly in an invigorating combination of black comedy and fantasy. Jeunet took inspiration for the cinematography of this film from the Brazilian artist Juarez Machado whose colour palette consists mainly of deep greens, ruby reds and mustard yellows; Jeunet and head cameraman Bruno Delbonnel aimed to make each shot look painted instead of filmed. The colour scheme is used throughout the film to create warm and heady shots steeped in all-consuming eccentricism and cabaret.
The musical score was composed by Yann Tiersen, a quirky composer found by Jeunet by accident as he was rifling through his friend’s CDs. Tiersen uses piano, accordion and violin as a base for his music then builds up on top of this with experimentations of weird and wonderful world instruments. The product is a thoroughly avant-garde piece of French folk with undertones reminiscent of Chopin, Satie, Philip Glass and Michael Nyman.
And so, the fierce collaboration of Jeunet, Tautou and Tiersen in the making of Amélie creates true classic. The film has rightfully earned this status by its sheer charm and by its subtle complexity with regard to both its storyline and its cinematographic style. Evie Deavall
