Les Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (2001) - happiness 101

directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet / starring Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz

My favourite Paris movies, #2

Amelie is a young, naive, introverted woman, leading a simple and secure life in Montmartre, Paris. The death of Princess Diana and the events caused by it change her life forever. And many other lives, too.

I don't know how or what to write about Amelie. Everyone knows the film. Everyone loves it. And if they don't, there's something slightly wrong about them. So I don't think I will write just a regular post, because everyone knows Amelie is the ultimate feel-good film, and that Audrey Tautou is simply wonderful - she practically IS Amelie - and so on.

Instead I'll just make a list of things I love about Amelie. (That's pretty much what my post would have been, anyway.) This of course requires me to watch the film once again while I'm writing the list, which I don't mind at all.

• The opening credits, showing the young Amelie entertaining herself with various, imaginative little ways. I like especially the part above, the strawberry eating.
• Everyone's likes and dislikes.
• The music.
• Amelie photographing the clouds shaped like bunnies and teddy bears.
• Pretty much everything the little Amelie does.
• The grown up Amelie's haircut. And her clothes. And her apartment.
• The café she works in.
• That I've been in the café she works in!
• The way she becomes a regular do-gooder.
• "I'm nobody's little weasel."
• Lucien.
• How they've made Paris look unrealistically romantic and magical. I love the colours of the film.
• The girl with the glass in Glass Man's painting.
• Amelie's good deeds. All of them. Especially the travelling garden gnome. And how she helps the blind man.
• Nino's scrap book and the mystery of the bald man.
• Amelie teaching the evil man next door a lesson.
• "Without you, today's emotions would be the scurf of yesterday's."
• Amelie's pig bedside lamp.

• The wall-shattering toilette sex.
• How she always picks up a good stone when she sees one.
• Ha! Sacre Couer!
• How Amelie once in a while looks right into the camera and smiles.
• Did I mention music already?
• "You'll never be a vegetable. Even artichoces have hearts."
• Amelie's explanations why Nino doesn't show up in time to the café. (He either didn't find the photo or a gang of bank robbers took him hostage, etc.)
• Amelie's collegues and the regular customers. Especially Hipolito, the failed writer.
• The little kisses in the end.
• The happy ending montage.
• How by the end of the film you just have to admit that life is good, dammit.

Towards the end I began to forget I was supposed to be looking for things that make Amelie so damn brilliant. Because I was too concentrated on enjoying that damn brilliance. Ah, the world is an inch better place, once again.


"It's better to help people than a garden gnome."

My TOP 5 favourite Paris movies

To mark my upcoming trip to Paris (I'll be off TOMORROW!!), here's a list of my favourite Paris movies. This was fairly easy, as I haven't seen that many films set in Paris. (Or French films, for that matter. They are often a bit weird.) The original plan was to first post this and then during my absence publish longer posts of each movie. Well, as it happens, I recently picked up a nasty virus called lazyness, so I'll only post this now, and the others after I came back. Cured. Hopefully.

Anyway, here you go, sil vous plait, voila and a couple of stress mark thingys here and there, I don't know where.

5. Marie Antoinette (2006)

THE PLACE TO SEE: The palace in Versailles.

"This is ridiculous."
"This, Madame, is Versailles."

4. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)

THE PLACES TO SEE: Notre Dame. Duh. And Disneyland, ooooooh yeah, I've only been waiting for this for twenty years!!

"Morning in Paris, the city awakes / To the bells of Notre Dame / The fisherman fishes, the bakerman bakes / To the bells of Notre Dame / To the big bells as loud as the thunder / To the little bells soft as a psalm / And some say the soul of the city's the toll of the bells / The bells of Notre Dame" 

3. Before Sunset (2004)

THE THING TO DO: The Seine cruise.

"I heard this story once about when the Germans were occupying Paris and they had to retreat back. They wired Notre Dame to blow, but they had to leave one guy in charge of hitting the switch. And the guy, the soldier, he couldn't do it. You know, he just sat there, knocked out by how beautiful the place was."

2. Amélie (2001)

THE PLACE TO SEE: The café where Amélie works. And its toilet.

"Let me help you. Step down. Here we go! The drum major's widow! She's worn his coat since the day he died. The horse's head has lost an ear! That's the florist laughing. He has crinkly eyes. In the bakery window, lollipops. Smell that! They're giving out melon slices! Sugarplum, ice cream! We're passing the park butcher. Ham, 79 francs. Spareribs, 45! Now the cheese shop. Picadors are 12.90. Cabecaus 23.50. A baby's watching a dog that's watching the chickens. Now we're at the kiosk by the metro. I'll leave you here. Bye!"

1. Paris, je t'aime (2006)

THE PLACES TO SEE: Everything! The Eiffel tower, Tuileries subway station, the tomb of Oscar Wilde, the mosque...

"Sitting there, alone in a foreign country, far from my job and everyone I know, a feeling came over me. It was like remembering something I'd never known before or had always been waiting for, but I didn't know what. Maybe it was something I'd forgotten or something I've been missing all my life. All I can say is that I felt, at the same time, joy and sadness. But not too much sadness, because I felt alive. Yes, alive. That was the moment  

I fell in love with Paris. And I felt Paris fall in love with me."