French people. Ya gotta love ’em. I know that’s not a widely held belief in the States, and I understand that anybody who closely studies the masthead of this publication might conclude that I have ulterior motives for this statement, mais non, really, it’s true. Just go see Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie and try to disagree. This utterly enchanting picture created a box office sensation in its native land, partially because it posits—no, it insists upon—a certain ideal of what it means to be French, or, more specifically, Parisian. Director Jeunet is known for much darker visions than the one presented here; with codirector Marc Caro, he created the mordantly funny Delicatessen and the creepy fairy tale The City of Lost Children. Jeunet went Hollywood for the stylish misfire Alien: Resurrection in 1997, but here he returns to his native land with a madcap, zippy, endlessly imaginative tale of Parisian waitress Amélie, a creature of pure adorableness and ingenuity who makes a hobby of engineering the destinies of those around her while hesitating to fulfill her own. Armed with an arsenal of virtuosic techniques, Jeunet creates a sunny, humane vision that suggests Michael Powell (The Red Shoes) adapting Raymond Queneau, the French novelist whose beloved Zazie in the Metro created the late 20th-century archetype of the gamine in Paris. Jeunet’s Amélie is a Zazie for the new millennium, if you will—shier, but just as charming, and with a better attitude. Her Paris is all marble countertops, leafy trees, and overflowing fruit baskets; even the porn emporium where her destined lover works is clean, bright, and peopled with genial eccentrics.
Indeed, Amélie makes the city look like a literal heaven on earth, and why not? French commercial cinema has been particularly brutalized by the Americanization of world culture in recent years; what does it say when the most bankable director in France makes his Joan of Arc film en anglais, for heaven’s sake? (Not that Luc Besson’s ponderous The Messenger would have been any better in any language, mind you.) Jeunet’s cast is full of quintessentially un-American types, many of its faces new to us (although some might recognize Claire Maurier, who played the mother in The 400 Blows; and of course it wouldn’t be a Jeunet film without cranky homunculus Dominique Pinon). The freshest of these faces belongs to the luminous Audrey Tautou in the title role; she exudes a warmth that’s simultaneously comforting and heart-stoppingly sexy.
Amélie is not just a marvelous film but a potent statement. At a time when Hollywood is squandering its monopoly on moviemaking magic, Jeunet casts a wicked spell from across the pond, all the while doing it the French way.
