Amélie, je t'aime!
Revisiting the most charming film of 2001.
Victoria: Hello, dear readers!!!
In last week's big look at the films of 2001, we didn't go particularly deep on any one movie, so throughout the year, you can expect a handful of deep dives into some of our absolute favorites. Today, we're going to look at Amélie!
I had not seen Amélie since high school (when I got the DVD from Netflix and watched it three times before sending it back), so I rewatched it this week. I was nervous that it would not hold up, or might be too twee. Amélie, as a character, flirts dangerously close to a manic pixie dream girl, but she does not cross the line. She's perfect.
The movie felt a little long, but maybe that was just because it’s not in English. In college I took French specifically so I could watch Amélie without subtitles, and I never got close (though I have added a daily DuoLingo practice to my life, so we'll see). One subplot, involving a café patron who won't leave the women employees alone, has not aged well.
But overall this movie was just as delightful as I remembered. If anything, it made me feel a little feral, since I, trapped in my house, feel a bit like Amélie, watching everyone else's lives pass by.
How do you feel about Amélie? Can you watch it without English subtitles?
Hayley: Amélie is just so magical. I worked at a restaurant in high school, and one of my coworkers loaned me DVDs all the time of movies he really loved and wanted to talk about with someone. This was how Amélie came into my life, and I absolutely LOVED it. I had been taking French class since 6th grade, but aside from the occasional sappy film in a high school French class (Les choristes, Le huitième jour, a handful of the Asterix movies, etc.) I didn't really watch a ton of French movies. The first time I saw Amélie I was like, wow, there are actually COOL French movies out there?! Who knew? (Everyone. Everyone knew this except 16-year-old Hayley).
Watching Amélie made me feel cool, obviously, and I would pin the beginning of my love and appreciation for film as an art form on that movie. It was so different from anything I had seen before, and even today whenever I rewatch it I am a little mesmerized by it. The color scheme! The editing! The characters! It's so vibrant and fun and also feels deeply French, which means it is equal parts sad, weird, and horny.
Without sounding too insufferable I want to provide some context, dear readers: I majored in French in college, and I spent a year studying abroad in Besançon, a city in the Jura mountains about an hour away from the Swiss border. Students came from all over the world to Besançon to learn French at the university's centre de linguistique appliquée (CLA), and at least 80% of my daily conversations were conducted in French. This is different from studying in a place like Paris, where everyone you encounter will speak English to you immediately. Yes, I am throwing shade on people who studied in Paris, je m'en fous.
So, to that end, I can watch Amélie without English subtitles. But, this is less a function of my knowledge of French and more of how many times I've seen it. I basically have the dialogue memorized. But something that my high school French teacher (Shoutout to Madame Spencer!) suggested I do in order to deepen my understanding of vocabulary was to watch movies in French without subtitles, follow context clues, and pause and write down words or phrases that were unfamiliar to me. I did this many times with Amélie, and when I was in Besançon, I read the first three Harry Potter books in French. To this day, I think that this is a really wonderful learning tool for anyone that has an intermediate-level competency with a language and wants to expand their vocabulary.
What are some of your favorite scenes or moments from Amélie?
Victoria: My number one favorite moment is right at the end of the film, where Amélie and Nino are riding his motorbike, and she's holding on to him, and she presses her nose right into the nape of his neck. It's so sensual, and they both seem so happy.
I also love the way this movie handles sex. It's just a part of their lives and a part of their world in a way that's not flashy. The movie was rated R in America, but it should really be PG-13 — the nudity and sexual comments are incidental and very funny. I especially love Amélie and Nino's post-coital moment, when she's laying back smiling and he's cuddled against her with his eyes closed. It feels like a subversion of the typical gender roles — it's a pose we've seen lots with the woman blissfully cuddling and the man who lies back. It's such an unexpected little moment.
Another image that has lived in my brain forever is the old man, Dominique Bretodeau, sharing his favorite part of the roast chicken with his grandson at the end. Something about the way food and eating is represented in this food is so tactile. I feel like I can taste that morsel of chicken now, just thinking about it.
Watching this week, I realized my favorite side character is the failed writer, Hippolito, who hangs out at the café all day shooting the shit, which is honestly my dream. Hippolito might not have lots of successful novels, but he's not exactly bitter about it. That's just life, he says. Rejection is part of it. As long as he has neighbors to chat with and a good cup of coffee, he'll be alright. It's such a tender moment when he sees Amélie has graffitied his words on the wall outside.
What are your favorite parts?
Hayley: I totally agree about the very non-flashy use of sex and sexual content in this movie. I love that Nino works at a sex shop, but instead of making it scandalous it's just highlighting the boring nature of working retail, like stocking shelves and trying to get someone to cover your shift.
All of my favorite parts of this movie are very small moments, which DUH of course — that's what the movie is about. I love the shot of the wine glasses dancing on the tablecloth, and all the different Dominique Bretodeaus and the “Bre-to-deau/Bre-do-teau” confusion. One of my favorite scenes is when she fantasizes about Nino coming through her little door beads into the kitchen and then suddenly they move and then she sees that it's just her cat playing with them. I also love that this movie has an entire Princess Diana through line, and saying "Lady Di" in a French accent is never not fun.
When Dominique Bretodeau opens that little tin box, whew...it is very emotional. His face is a delight to watch, and I love the flashback to the scene with the marbles. Everything in this movie is just so visceral. I feel like part of what makes it feel long is that we get to sit with the emotional weight of every little thing that is happening on screen. When she sends her dad's garden gnome around the world with the flight attendant...that is ALSO very emotional. I love when the reclusive painter helps Lucien creatively insult Collignon. There's just so much to love in this movie!
This has always felt like a writer's movie to me, because of the way it portrays Amélie constantly observing everything around her. Sometimes her snap judgments are reductive, sure, but there is also a lot of compassion and understanding in the way she views the world. It's like she is living in it and observing it at the same time, neither fully in one place or the other, which definitely contributes to her loneliness. I like her slow journey towards vulnerability that lets her find a moment of pure happiness. This movie is tender and sweet without being cloying, and says a lot about human nature without being precious. It's truly a delight, and I think its warmth is what makes it so much fun to rewatch over and over again.
Victoria: Something I noticed watching this week is that, at the beginning of the movie, Amélie is pretty quiet. And then, maybe halfway, you realize that actually she's talking quite a lot. It made me feel all fuzzy to think about the change in her, the joy of being alive.
One thing I briefly want to touch on before we wrap up is the Amélie musical. In my opinion, this is not a source material that screamed for a musical, but the powers that be disagreed. On Broadway, it got pretty bad reviews and closed quickly, but this week I listened to the Broadway cast recording. I made it maybe halfway through before quitting. It was just so obvious, so lacking in subtlety. They basically just set every line, word for word, to music in a very jarring way. But then on Wikipedia I found out there was a London production of the show in late 2019, which changed the show considerably, including adding new songs and changing the orchestrations to make it much more accordion-y. I highly recommend the London cast recording, if musicals are your thing. I've been listening to it all week.
Hayley: This feels like a classic misunderstanding of a film that would be a good musical! Like it's colorful and fun and the pacing is there, but it feels like a very American thing to want to make this movie into a musical. I think cinematically, the world of Amélie is already pretty heightened? Much to think about.
If you enjoyed Amélie, there is another Audrey Tautou/Jean-Pierre Jeunet film called A Very Long Engagement (2004) that has a lot of similar elements. It is about a French woman whose fiancé goes to fight in WWI and is reported as dead, but she has a feeling that he is still alive and embarks on a long journey of research and discovery to see if he is in fact still alive. It is a movie about war, yes, but it is still very romantic and has little moments of magic throughout. Also, Jodie Foster is randomly in it.
If you want something that is the total opposite of Amélie, There is also a really wonderful film called La Haine (1995) that was directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, who plays Nino in Amélie. It's about police brutality and violence in the suburbs of Paris, and it was shot in black and white. It's one of those movies that is frustratingly timeless. Also, it has a young Vincent Cassel in it.
Fin.
What Victoria currently digs:
I made this “killer chocolate cake” during the blizzard and it was extremely yummy. If you don’t want to make the cake, it would be worth it to make a box mix of cake and just make the frosting — the frosting is incredible.
I have been talking about this on all my social media, but I finished “Take A Hint, Dani Brown” by Talia Hibbert this week and it was extremely wonderful. It’s technically the second in a series of romances, but you don’t need to read the first one first (though it was also very good).
The only beauty product I’ve used with any sort of regularity in the past year is perfume. It’s fun to spritz on in the morning, after a shower, or even before bed. Instead of spending a lot of money on this, go to any perfume website that does samples and order anything that sounds fun. I like Twisted Lily.
Stuff Hayley is loving:
I’ve been using the Laneige Lip Sleeping Mask for a long time, but I decided to try the Tatcha Kissu Lip Mask and….it feels like beauty blasphemy to say this but the Tatcha one is making a bigger difference for me! My lips are way more hydrated throughout the day, it’s absolutely perfect for winter. You only need the tiniest little scoop of product, too, which I like.
If you are over Goodreads and want a better way to track and organize books, you HAVE to try The StoryGraph. It will import your Goodreads data so you don’t have to start logging from scratch, it offers personalized recommendations, and it analyzes the kinds of books you enjoy with a level of accuracy that is scary — Mine told me that I “mainly read nonfiction books that are reflective, informative, and emotional.”
This Tiktok user is reading Twilight one sentence at a time and it is mesmerizing and hilarious to watch. I started at the beginning and I’ve been going through like 10 a day.
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