AMÉLIE directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, written by Jeunet and Guillaume Laurant, produced by Claude Ossard, with Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Rufus and Yolande Moreau. 120 minutes. An Alliance Atlantis release. Opens Friday (November 9). Rating: NNNNN
Amélie, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s most personal film to date, is in the running for best-film-of-the-year honours. It’s a masterpiece of whimsy and romance, which is notable because the director has seemed till now to be a hardened type. Jeunet and his filmmaking partner Marc Caro made their mark in 1991 with their hilarious, wildly imaginative debut, Delicatessen, and then came back with The City Of Lost Children. Since then he’s flown solo, making Alien Resurrection and now Amélie.
The title character (newcomer Audrey Tautou) is a shy, beautiful waitress living in Paris’s charming Montmartre district. She occupies her time doing good deeds such as returning a box of childhood toys to a middle-aged man and playing matchmaker for a couple who frequent the cafe where she works. But Amélie hides behind her own goodwill, afraid to take risks, until she bumps into a young man (Mathieu Kassovitz) who collects torn-up Polaroids from subway photo booths. This capricious, joyful film wraps several life-affirming moments into a light, bouncy bundle. After it ends, you leave the theatre vibrating with happiness.
“I think people love this movie because Amélie’s generosity is totally free,” says Jeunet. “Usually in life, when you give something to someone you want something in return. But not Amélie — she wants nothing in exchange for her love, and that’s beautiful.”
Jeunet was in town during this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, where Amélie picked up the People’s Choice Award.
When he first walks in for our interview he looks at the hotel room, the photographer and me sternly. I think, “Oh, he doesn’t like this room, and he hates me.” But then he sits down and winks. Occasionally during the interview he stops to make faces at the photographer and then continues to talk.
It’s this sense of play that guides Amélie. In one scene, the heroine leaves a trail of elaborate clues up the steps of a church to guide her potential lover to his book of lost photos.
Jeunet admits he does this kind of thing all the time in real life. “I make a game out of giving a gift to someone. I’ll tell them to go to the refrigerator. Inside they’ll find a piece of paper stuffed inside the heart of an artichoke that will tell them to turn on the TV, where I’ll appear telling them to go to a book and turn to page 81, and so on. It gives me pleasure.”
Jeunet’s other pleasure is Paris, and Amélie is a love letter to his hometown. “This is my Paris, the city I love. This is the first film I didn’t shoot on a sound stage and I did the location scouting myself. I modified reality to get the Paris of my heart — I changed posters, I got rid of cars on the streets and digitally changed the colour of the sky and buildings.”
It gives the film a fairy-tale feeling, which is echoed in the casting of newcomer Tautou as Amélie.
“I originally wanted Emily Watson to play Amélie,” says Jeunet. “I did some tests with her, but she pulled out for personal reasons and I was very disappointed. I saw Audrey on a poster in the street. I noticed her big eyes and beautiful hair, and thought maybe she was the one. We did a few tests, and in a matter of seconds I knew she was Amélie. It’s a very emotional moment for a director when that happens.
“Audrey has grace, a great sense of timing, like an athlete, and she’s got unusually big irises in her eyes. She’s like Louise Brooks and Snow White put together.”
ingridr@nowtoronto.com
