AMELIE

Released in France as "Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain", this utterly beguiling fable from one half of the team behind "Delicatessen" and "The City of Lost Children" whipped up a storm of controversy across the Channel, with some commentators arguing its nostalgic whimsy brushed the realities of modern multicultural Paris under the carpet. This is a charming tale of a young French girl who helps strangers find love and happiness. A waitress in a Parisian café, Amélie (Audrey Tautou) sees it as her mission in life to right wrongs and improve the lives of her customers. But she proves rather less successful at bettering her own lot, despite falling for a handsome loner (Mathieu Kassovitz) with his own bizarre quest.Forget the plot, the real delight is the army of oddballs that rotate around the gamine Miss Tautou. Hypochondriac tobacconists, tyrannical grocers, kindly strippers, failed writers, all human life is here thanks to Jean-Pierre Jeunet's stock company of character actors. With so many colourful eccentrics and unlikely subplots, it's perhaps inevitable that "Amélie" is episodic and fractured. But this is a small price to pay for a film guaranteed to put a smile on your face and a chanson in your coeur.

Original title: Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain.
Directed by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
Written by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Guillaume Laurant.
Cast: Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Rufus, Lorella Cravotta,

Claire Maurier, Isabelle Nanty, Dominique Pinon, Serge Merlin, Jamel

Debbouze, Yolande Moreau, Urbain Cancellier.

Related links: Official site | All of David N. Butterworth's reviews at La Movie Boeuf

French confection

Sweet and offbeat, the French romantic comedy "Amelie" with a charmingly playful performance by Audrey Tautou is one of the best, most imaginative films of the year.

By DAVID N. BUTTERWORTH
Offoffoff.com

                It might actually be the Best Picture of the year, but a couple of films (namely "Memento" and "Sexy Beast") might have something to say about that. "Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain" ("The Fabulous Destiny of Amelie Poulain"), to give the film its full title, is precisely that: fabulous. The Oscar buzz on this delightful French fancy is already way out there and this time (unlike Miramax's last Oscar push, the syrupy sweet and undeserving "Chocolat," a slight confection by anybody's standards) it's warranted.

Playful, surreal, and highly imaginative, "Amélie" is just what the doctor ordered, a cinematic delight that couldn't have come at a better time. It seems petty not to give "Amélie" its full complement of stars (i.e., four out of four) but the film does tend to flag a little towards the end and might have been tightened up some in the third act. That is not, however, going to prevent me from wholeheartedly recommending it, adding that you're unlikely to see a more creative or charming film this year.

With breakneck speed and dreamlike ingenuity, the film introduces us to Amelie literally fresh from the womb. With a spectacular voiceover (courtesy Andre Dussollier), writer/director Jean-Pierre Jeunet brilliantly summarizes Amélie's childhood — her likes and dislikes, the people and places around her, the tragic death of her mother — in a style that can best be described as Peter Greenaway meets Barry Sonnenfeld (an obsession with facts and seemingly inconsequential details powered by rapid-fire camerawork). The narration is so effective, in fact, that you can easily imagine this film running its 120-minute course solely on the strength of it.

The grown Amélie (played to wide-eyed perfection by the elfin Audrey Tautou), now a waitress in a little Montmartre cafe called The Two Windmills, discovers a small box of childhood trinkets hidden behind her bathroom wall and vows to find its owner. The success of this venture, how it magically transforms the recipient, subsequently inspires the young woman to help others, anonymously influencing and altering their lives (she guides a blind man across a busy street, describing everything around her in precise and offbeat detail — the price of ham, a child looking at a dog looking at a roasting chicken, a man handing out melon slices). Finally, Amélie turns her own mischievous stratagems on herself, pursuing a mysterious man (Mathieu Kassovitz) who keeps a scrapbook of torn and discarded passport photographs.

In keeping with his fantastic and pop-eyed vision,  Jeunet populates his film with a splendid array of colorful characters, from the patrons of The Two Windmills to the women behind the bar, from the brittle-boned painter (who has committed to canvas the very same Renoir every year for 20 years) to the loutish fruit-and-vegetable seller who gets his just desserts, from the stone skipping to the globe-trotting garden gnome (true story, or urban myth?).This is a film to treasure and relish, to rewind and revisit at every opportunity. With all of the unsettling events going on in the world right now, it's nice to have something, someone like the fanciful Amelie, to finally make us smile.