Amelie

According to Wikipedia, this movie has been defined as a romantic comedy movie. In my opinion, this movie is a comedy movie but not a romantic movie. The main point of this movie is not love, but the director wants to emphasize on lonely. Love is a side element in this movie.  In this movie, all the characters are not friends. They can be a colleague, neighbour or even a stranger, but they have a similarity, which is they are loner including Amelie herself. Each loner has their own eccentricity to fill out their lonely life. For example, Amelie like to look at the audiences’ face in the cinema, Joseph like to popping bubble wrap etc. In real life, most of the people seem like not lonely, but lonely is always surrounding us and we may have eccentric that other people do not know. This movie had expressed the lonely and the things that people might do when they are lonely which we might not notice in our life.

The death of Lady Di is the turning point of Amelie’s life. She discovers a box at her bathroom when the TV announce the death of Lady Di. She decided to return it to him. After seeing his reaction and his new found perspective, she decides to devote her life to the people around her. Such as, her father who is obsessed with his garden-gnome, a failed writer, a hypochondriac, a man who stalks his ex girlfriends, the blind old man, the love of her life, the landlady who betray by her husband, the shop worker who always bully by his boss and a man whose bones are as brittle as glass. The way Amelie help these people are interesting. She like to use mischief to help these people. For example, she called Mr. Bretodeau through the public telephone that leads him to find back his little treasure, she steal the letter from landlady and fake a letter that late for 30 years, she steal her father garden gnome and post the scenery photos to encourage her father to travel etc. This mischief was started from young when Amelie revenge her neighbour who cheated her.

Even when Amelie pursue her love, she use the same way. She spoils the photo booth that Nino use to collect the unwanted photo to reveal the secret of the ghost and solve Nino’s problem. She takes photo at photo booth to tell Nino about the date and venue of their meet. She called Nino through the public phone and asked Nino to follow the blue arrow. While Nino reached to the top, she returns the photo book to him and hides herself up. She asked her colleague to put a paper on Nino’s pocket that leads to a misunderstanding that Nino is date with Gina. At last, with the encouragement of the drawer, she has pursues her love successfully. The way she pursues her love is not romantic and it is not effective enough.

From the way Amelie helps the people around her, I can see that Amelie is a girl who is not use to socialize. She always use a direct but anonymous method to help the people even when she pursues her love. This is because she had been lonely since childhood that causing her afraid to have direct contact with the people. Her comfort zone is her wonderful imaginative life that she can see different shape of clouds through her camera and put herself and the dialogue that she want in the TV.

I like the part where Amelie revenges Mr. Collignon. The way she revenges might be a bit childish, but actually it works. Not only is the revenge, everything that she does is effective. Her father walks out from home, Mr. Bretodeau is reunion with his family, the drawer can draw the expression of the girl holding the cup etc. They breakthrough from the lonely including Amelie herself.  

In this movie, the director also emphasize on the date in a precise way. The time mentioned at the starting is indicates the born of Amelie, the date where Lady Di die is the turning point of Amelie’s life and the time mentioned in the ending indicate that Nino and Amelie has become a lover and this date has imply that Amelie is reborn. As a conclusion, I think this is a meaningful, a bit whimsical comedy but not a romantic movie.