Amelie cover art

Amelie Details

2001 Certificate 15
  • Rated:
  • 80
  • from 63,079 members

Amelie Poulain (Audrey Tautou) is a young woman who glides through the streets of Paris as quietly as a mouse. With wide eyes and a tiny grin, she sees the world in a magical light, discovering minor miracles every day. A shy and reserved person whose favorite moments are spent alone skimming stones into the water, Amelie was .. Read more

Starring Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Yolande Moreau, Dominique Pinon
Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Genres Comedy, Romance, World Cinema

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Amelie

Amelie Poulain (Audrey Tautou) is a young woman who glides through the streets of Paris as quietly as a mouse. With wide eyes and a tiny grin, she sees the world in a magical light, discovering minor miracles every day. A shy and reserved person whose favorite moments are spent alone skimming stones into the water, Amelie was raised by a pair of eccentrics who falsely diagnosed her with a heart problem at the age of six and so limited her exposure to the outside world. Now a free and independent woman, Amelie wears a bob that curls in every direction and dresses in red. With a job in a cafe and an aptitude for spying on her neighbors, Amelie entertains herself by enacting a series of homemade, kindhearted practical jokes. She returns a long-forgotten box of childhood knickknacks to its proper owner, she sends her father's garden troll on a trip around the world, and she creates a love connection at the cafe between the hypochondriac druggist and a beer-drinking grouch. But when the day is done, Amelie finds one stone unturned, and decides to work her magic on the quirky object of her affections, Nino Quincampoix (Matthieu Kassovitz), whom she has never met.
Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (who codirected DELICATESSEN and THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN with Marc Caro) presents AMELIE, an aesthetically gorgeous and inventive film. The rich, glowing color scheme is offset by flashbacks in black and white archival footage that give short biographies of each character. A soft-spoken narrator guides viewers through this enlightening fairy tale, which sometimes speeds through the streets and other times drifts in slow motion. AMELIE is humorous, questioning, and strange, and it will change the lives of all who watch it, if only for a short while after leaving Amelie's world.

Starring Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Yolande Moreau, Dominique Pinon, Michel Robin
Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Studio MOMENTUM PICTURES
Run time DVD: 1 hr 56 mins
Certificate Certificate 15
Collections 100 must-see movies, 100 Rom-Coms
Genres Comedy, Romance, World Cinema
Language DVD: French
Subtitles DVD: English
Released DVD: 15 Apr 2002
Production year: 2001
Format DVD

Amelie (2001)

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  • Critics' reviews (5) of Amelie

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  • 5 stars out of 5

    Jean-Pierre Jeunet, along with former collaborator Marc Caro, is better known as a purveyor of nightmarish excursions into the fantastic — Delicatessen, City of Lost Children, Alien: Resurrection. But this romantic comedy drama enchants and beguiles with a nostalgic optimism thanks to glorious visuals and ceaseless invention. Audrey Tautou is guaranteed iconic status as Amélie, the Montmartre waitress whose selfless joie de vivre leads her to improve the lives of her friends and neighbours. She only takes a break from her role of good fairy to pursue Mathieu Kassovitz, the handsome loner who collects rejected photo-booth snaps for his album of forgotten smiles. It has to be conceded that complaints of uncosmopolitan conservatism made against this film have some justification. But as a love letter to the City of Light — filmed at locations all around Paris yet retaining the stylised magic of a movie set — this is as deliciously romantic and ingeniously mischievous as cinema gets.

    • Radio Times
  • "...Mr. Jeunet's sense of humor gives the movie heart; his real affection for the medium can be seen in all the funny little curlicues and jottings around the action..."

    • New York Times
  • Most helpful member's review of Amelie

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  • 88 out of 102 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 5 stars

    Amelie

    I found this film to be be perfectly crafted in all respects.

    The first thing that caught my eye was the stunning beauty of every frame. Each shot appeared to be perfectly 'manicured'. There was no 'dissonace', all images; people, background, objects lived in perfect harmony to the eye.

    I loved the way that each character was drawn in purely existential terms. I.e.What they did to pass their time, their quirks and idiosyncracies. This made indentification with the characters all the stronger. Anal retention was a popular theme. (Both mother and father, the painter (only to the extent of his art) and the ardent lover in the cafe (tinged with jealousy).

    I savoured the contrast of the outward hardiness of the young, physically strong Amelie with the physical brittleness of the Old painter. Conversely, the inner brittleness of Amelie, starved of affection and physical contact, with the hardiness and impermeability of the old painter's life-style. These two characters constituted the ballast of the work and between them provided the continuity in which the others existed.

    I could go on, but I would urge all those who thought the ending too long to watch it again. This time, see how Jeunet interposes the final 'chase' with the 'pulling together' of earlier threads. When Amelie finally falls into the arms of her love, there is nothing left to say. If you think this is too long then you just haven't been watching carefully enough.

    10 sur 10 Monsieur Jeunet!!

      • john williams from Manchester
  • Most recent members' review of Amelie

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  • 22 out of 24 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 5 stars

    Perfect

    Where to start with this movie? Every single scene in this movie is perfectly framed, the beauty of the movie is there for even the most passive of observers to see.

    The story might be nothing more than cute, but it dosen't pretend to be anything its not. Perfectly executed with so much thought going in to every scene and storyline.

    If you dont smile at least once during this movie then you are a corpse and shouldn't really be watching films in the first place.

      • A customer from Glasgow, Scotland
  • News and features

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    Paris

    Tautou rules out Hollywood move

    • 22 Sep 2009

    French actress Audrey Tautou has ruled out a permanent move to Hollywood despite acknowledging it would help her career - because she fears living in Los Angeles would inflate her ego. The star has risen to international fame with roles in award-winning film Amelie and The Da Vinci Code, opposite Tom Hanks. However, Tautou, who still lives in Paris, prefers working close to home - because she is convinced stars who live in Hollywood are pursuing glory and fame rather than good roles. She tells Read more

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Rating breakdown

63,079 Member ratings
  • 100
16,447
  • 90
9,954
  • 80
13,489
  • 70
8,354
  • 60
5,778
  • 50
3,339
  • 40
1,979
  • 30
1,462
  • 20
1,485
  • 10
792

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