Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001) - film review

The victim of an unhappy and lonely childhood, Amélie Poulain attains adulthood with a strong sense of justice and a willingness to help others, a strange set of qualifications for a modest waitress in a Montmarte café.  One day she decides to dedicate herself to bringing happiness to those who are less fortunate than she, whilst punishing those who deserve to be punished.  Her crusade brings her into contact with a strange young man, Nino, who works in a sex shop and who collects discarded passport photographs.  Although she falls in love with Nino, Amélie is unable to approach him herself...

Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain was the film which defined French cinema across the world in the year 2001.  Not only was it the most successful film made in France that year, attracting well over 8 million viewers in France alone, it was also the most distinctive, the most memorable, and certainly the most talked about.   Through a combination of fine acting, deliriously funny comedy, eye-opening photography and memorable, quintessentially French, music, the film could hardly have failed and it looks set to become a classic.   It is no exaggeration to say that Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain was the French film phenomenon of the year 2001.

The film was directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who was previously best known for his collaborative ventures with Marc Caro, including the surreal fantasies Delicassen (1991) and La Cité des enfants perdus (1995).  Jeunet’s style of cinema has a very strong visual sense which is very well suited to his surreal brand of cinema.  In Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain, Jeunet skilfully uses the same cinematographic approach to tell a fairly straightforward love story in a totally original way.  Although the plot and characterisation are admiitedly thin, the story is told in such a mesmerising and charming way that such faults are easily forgiven, if bearly noticed.  The film can be rightly regarded as a modern fairy tale – it has the magic of a classic children’s fable but set in a world we can all recognise as our own.

Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain was not just a huge success with the cinema-going public, but it has also been well-received by critics.  It has won many awards across the world, and picked up no less than four awards at the Césars Ceremony in 2002: for best film, best director (Jean-Pierre Jeunet), best film score (Yann Tiersen) and best set design (Aline Bonetto).  It also won five Oscar nominations in 2002 (the first time for a French film) but failed to win an award, in spite of the film’s enormous popularity in America.

The film’s popularity in France was at least partly influenced by the presence of three cult figures in the film, Mathieu Kassovitz (the charismatic young actor/director made famous for his film La Haine in 1995), Jamel Debbouze, a popular young television comedian, and Dominique Pinon, an actor who featured in many of Jeunet’s previous films (most notably Delicatessen ).  All three actors make an impressive contribution to the film, but it is the impish Audrey Tautou who captivates the audience’s attention for the most part, playing the lead role of Amélie Poulain. Despite her tender age, Tautou delivers a spell-binding performance, and is perfectly suited for her role.  The fame that this film has brought her, plus her evident talent as an actress, will almost guarantee her future as a leading lady in French cinema for some time to come.

Although the acting is good, and the actors certainly have some good material to work with, it is probably the very distinctive photography which has the greatest impact on the spectator.  Paris, in which the film is set, has never appeared so appealing and romantic, a fairy tale setting which makes the film’s surreal flourishes (including a suicidal goldfish and a globe-trotting garden gnome) almost believable.

Thanks to the film’s sheer originality and creative overload, the fabulous destiny of Amélie Poulain and friends is doubtless assured – along with that of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, one of France’s most imaginative and popular film-makers.

© James Travers 2001

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