Amelie Poulain: character history, film description

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

"Amelie" is a French romantic comedy film. It was released in 2001 and quickly won the love of viewers around the world. The main character of the picture, Amelie Poulain, has become one of the most popular movie heroines of the new millennium; a kind of audience cult has formed around her. The visual style of the film and the famous soundtrack have become recognizable to people who have not even watched the film.

Story of the film

Director and screenwriter "Amelie" - Jean-Pierre Jeunet. He became famous in the early nineties with the films "Delicatessen" and "City of Lost Children". In 1997, he directed the fourth installment in the Alien franchise, Resurrection. After an unsuccessful studio experience in Hollywood, he decided to return to auteur cinema and wrote the script for "Amelie".

Genet saw actress Emily Watson as Amelie Poulain, whom he first saw on screen in Lars Von Trier's Breaking the Waves. Named after hermain character. However, the British actress was busy with other projects and did not speak French well enough. The director had to look for a replacement for Watson, and the young actress Audrey Tautou became her.

Plot description

The film focuses on the main character named Amelie Poulain. As a child, the girl's father, Rafael, mistakenly diagnosed her with a heart defect, and she was forced to spend her school years studying at home. The mother of the heroine died when a woman who decided to commit suicide and jumped from Notre Dame fell on her. Loneliness and lack of friends greatly developed Amelie's fantasy.

When the girl grew up, she left her father's house and got a job as a waitress in the cafe "Two Mills" in Montmartre. One day, she finds a cache in the apartment, hidden there by a small tenant who is now fifty years old. He, it turns out, is happy with such a gift from the past, and Amelie Poulain decides to interfere in the lives of other people.

Further events lead the girl to meet many interesting characters, including the photo booth worker Niko, who becomes the object of her romantic interest. Amelie helps a colleague find love, sends her father's garden gnome on a trip around the world with the help of a familiar flight attendant, and helps Niko unravel the mystery of crumpled photos.

Reaction to painting

The film was rejected by the commission of the Cannes Film Festival and called "uninteresting". This decision subsequently became the reasoncriticism from viewers and professional critics. The picture was released in French-speaking countries and had a limited screening in North America.

"Amelie" has an 89 percent positive review rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film was also a huge success among the general public: on a budget of $10 million, it earned about $175 million worldwide. In subsequent years, the cult around the painting only increased.

The soundtrack of the film became especially popular. Written by composer and multi-instrumentalist Jan Tiersen. Songs from the film "Amelie", especially the piano melody that sounds throughout the film, have become insanely popular. The soundtrack was nominated for many international awards and is considered one of the main keys to the film's success. Film critics believe that the failure in the selection for the Cannes Film Festival is due precisely to the fact that the copy submitted to the commission was without music.

"Amelie" was nominated for the 2001 Oscars for Best Foreign Film, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Sound and Best Production Design, and received four Cesar Awards and two BAFTAs.

For a long time theater directors tried to turn the story of Amelie Poulain into a musical. Genet refused to sell the rights to the story, and Tiersen did not want to transfer the rights to the original soundtrack. As a result, in 2013the screenwriter still sold the rights to the production in order to raise money for charity. The musical was released on Broadway in 2017 without the music from the original film and was not very successful.

Main character

Amelie Poulain has become a cult character in many countries, including Japan and Russia. The name Amelie has become popular among young parents, only in England in 2003 one and a half thousand newborns were named by this name.

Cafe "Two Mills", where the heroine worked, really exists and has become incredibly popular. Soaring real estate prices in the Montmartre quarter have also been linked to the film's success.