Amélie

AMELIE/LE FABULEUX DESTIN
D’AMÉLIE POULAIN
Amélie (2001)
 Enormous success
 Seen by more than 6 M in France during its first 7
weeks
 Many awards internationally
 4 Césars: best director, best scenario
 A “depiction of Frenchness”
 Ginette Vincendeau
Montmartre
 Montmartre
 The Sacré-Coeur
 “Aux Deux Moulins”
 Cobbled streets, street markets, corner shops
 Typical working class apartment
Paris
 Landmarks




The Seine, Notre-Dame and the Pont-des-Arts
Art Nouveau Métro stations
Canal Saint-Martin
Gare de l’Est, Gare du Nord
 Northern suburb
 Enghien
Le Déjeuner des Canotiers
1881
 Auguste Renoir
 Sunday lunch by the river
 A tradition
 Working-class fun
 Happiness in simple pleasures
Le Déjeuner des Canotiers
Cinematic intertext
 Poetic Realism
 Characters are “little people”
 Marcel Carné Hôtel du Nord (1938)
 Hotel owners, prostitutes
 Amélie
 Grocer, tobacconist, restaurant owner
Literary intertext
 The Little Red Riding Hood by Charles
Perrault
 Dressed in red
 Zazie dans le Métro by Raymond Queneau
 Big shoes, a fringe
 Le Passe Muraille by Marcel Aymé
 Depictions of Montmartre
Little Red Riding Hood
Visual intertext
 Lovers in Paris
 Robert Doisneau’s photographs
 Raymond Peynet’s lovers in Paris
Le baiser de l’Hôtel de
Ville by Robert Doisneau
Les Amoureux de Peynet
Les Amoureux de Peynet
Nostalgia
 French heritage
 Tour de France
 Proverbs
 A kinder world
 Cafés
 Childhood
 Chocolat Poulain
Similarity with the Cinema
du look
 Triumph of form over content
 Surface
 Diva (1980) by Jean-Jacques Beineix
Influence of cartoons and
commercials
 Saturated colour scheme
 Abrupt changes of scale
 Exaggerated sounds
 Digitally created special effects
 The beating heart, the key
 Talking paintings and photographs
A postmodern film
 Life is chaotic but fun
 A series of coincidences
 Emphasis on fragmented forms
 The photomaton pictures
 Distancing, self-reflexivity
 Use of mise-en-abyme
 Remake of Renoir painting
 Amélie’s videos
Attacks on Amélie
 Serge Kaganski in Libération
 “A video clip for the National Front”
 Ethnic cleansing
 “Demagogic retro postcard version of France”
 Not a realistic picture of Paris in 1999
 Little multiculturalism
 Jamel Debbouze/Lucien
 Absence of traffic
Attacks
 In Libération accusation of link to
collaborationism
 Right wing conservatism
 Frédéric Bonnaud in Film comment
 “A maniacal cataloguing of signifiers of a
caricature France”
Trivial or dark?
 Innocuous content, escapism
 Fun, happy ending
 Ginette Vincendeau
 Yet implicit criticism of French society?
 Reinforcement or implicit criticism of
classism and sexism?
 Dark view of human life?
 Cf Delicatessen
Exposes repression and
corruption in French society
 Authoritarianism
 Mistreatment of children and young adults
 Schoolyard
 M. Collignon with Lucien
 Sarcasm, “wit”
 Cruel nicknames
 Amélie called “Méli-mélo”
Reinforcing or criticism of
classism?
 Makes fun of lower middle class tastes
 M. Poulain
 Garden gnomes
 Front de libération des nains de jardin
 Stay-home mentality, “esprit casanier”
 Fear and distrust of the unknown, of strangers
Reinforcing or criticism of
sexism?
 Machismo
 Madeleine Wallace’s husband’s infidelity
 Joseph’s jealousy
 Amélie, a “femme-enfant” and a heroin
 Asexual
Dehumanization of modern
life
 Absurdity
 Prologue
 Life/death
 Lack of meaning
 Joys of childhood
 Credits: Amélie as a little girl
 M. Bretodeau
Fear of intimacy
 Amélie’s family
 Lack of affection
 Lack of communication
 The glass man
 Sex
 Represented as mechanical and ridiculous
 15 orgasms
 Scene in café
Compensations
 Obsessive behaviors
 Parents tidying up
 Characters at the café
 Georgette , the hypochondriac
 Joseph, the jealous lover
 Amélie herself
 Living through others
Compensations
 Projection on iconic celebrities
 Lady Di(ana)
 Amélie imagining of herself as a celebrity
 Cultivation of small pleasures
 Part of “Frenchness”
 Amélie’s description of the street to the blind man
 “Pierrot” Lollipops
 Food
 Bretodeau’s love of “oysters”
Amélie’s fixing of
situations
 M. Bretodeau
 Reconnecting
 Childhood
 Grandson
 M. Poulain
 Opening of space
 Madeleine Wallace
 Healing of old wounds
 Punishment of M. Collignon
Happy ending?
 Amélie and Nino
 Connection
 Fun and tenderness
 Last scene
 Opening up of space
 Gesturing
 But what will they have to face in real life?