After one year and two weeks of screening through American films, I am finally branching myself across the sea! I’m sure there’s a segment of my film-enamored friends who are annoyed that I’m starting a tour of international classics with “Amélie”, a rather popular and modern French film. There’s also another bunch of my friends who have mentioned loving this film and so I thought I’d go in for them. The story wanders a bit and only "finds" itself by act three, but I’m going to give my best summary a go—
“Amélie” is the story about a quirky, introverted woman who learns that she enjoys concocting complex schemes to influence the lives of those around her. Through these schemes she meets Raymond Dufayel, a frail artist who locks up in his apartment paints a copy of Renoir’s “Luncheon of the Boating Party”, every year. Together, the unlikely pair analyze the lone woman drinking in the center of the portrait, their analysis serving as a proxy for assessing Amélie’s own life. Through these conversations, Amélie realizes that her scheming is a way of avoiding acting on young love she feels for an equally quirky man, Nino Quincampoix. After a cat-and-mouse game of near-meetings around Paris, the two meet and realize their love is real. Amélie is finally happy.
I adored everything about this film; it was perfect to me. It lives in the same naive plane where all romantic comedies do (in which the bustling, frenetic city of Paris feels more like a countryside village) but is richer and more complex for how it mixes in humor (oftentimes very dark humor) and innocent wonder. The characters lived between simple caricatures and complex creatures and the story’s many layers grew away from the film’s center and then coalesced with purpose and grace. And other than the film’s oversaturated yellow hue, I loved the film’s zippy pace and set/costuming’s colorful design.
I could make up an analysis of the film's unique camerawork or casual depiction of sex as being some "French thing", but I wont. I have immediately realized that it’s kind of a fool’s errand to screen foreign films and expect some sort of understanding of that country. I watched 52 American films last year and still wouldn't admit to "understanding" American storytelling. A small handful of French, Japanese, British, Russian, or Italian films isn’t going to get me anywhere for those places, either. But these movies will build on the human story and experience that is emerging through the films I’ve watched (and from a unique perspective, no less). In this way, “Amélie” has delivered a message about courage, kindness, and love that I desperately needed at this moment. If other films on my list are half as good at being medicine for my mind, then I can't wait for more.