“Why I Love” Wednesday is a regular, every-other-week feature focusing on things that I love and why I love them. It gives me a chance to celebrate some of my favorite things out there, and it covers a broad spectrum. I try to be light on plot discussion, but I cannot guarantee that what follows is spoiler-free.
Amélie (French title: Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain) is the whimsical story of a woman who tries to improve the lives of her friends, family, and acquaintances in a variety of gently mischievous ways and, in the end, changes her own life as well. It was the first feign film that I ever watched. I don’t know where I heard of it, or what possessed me to check it out of the library, but I’m so glad I did. I love it.
The character of Amélie is the story. Everything that occurs happens because of her or something she did, making the movie the epitome of a character-driven story. So, naturally, I love this movie because I love Amélie.
Amélie is an isolated, motherless woman who decides, after discovering a hidden niche in her apartment that houses the treasures of a boy who lived there many years ago, to do a good deed. She finds the man and anonymously returns his belongings. When she sees the positive effect this has on him, she decides to devote herself to good deeds — playing matchmaker for lonely friends, giving hope to the hopeless, and putting a local bully in his place. She does it all quietly, often anonymously, without letting anyone know what she’s doing. Manipulative? Maybe. But Amélie has a good heart and is too introverted to act more openly. Not all of her plans work out perfectly, but (with the exception of the bully) everyone is happier in the end, including Amélie herself, who eventually has to come out of her shell and take a few risks of her own.
The way that Amélie goes about changing people lives is part of the fun. She guides a blind man along the street, so vividly describing the world around him that he can imagine it all for the first time. She kidnaps her father’s lawn gnome and sends it on worldwide tour, from which it sends postcards home, opening her father’s eyes to the world around him. Even the pranks she plays on the local bully are harmless, though they leave the man visibly shaken. (This is the only sour note for me — I’m not sure that bullying a bully is the answer.)
Even the style of the story itself is quirky and light-hearted. The narrator begins with the following observation before going on with a description of Amélie’s childhood:
“On September 3rd 1973, at 6:28pm and 32 seconds, a bluebottle fly capable of 14,670 wing beats a minute landed on Rue St Vincent, Montmartre. At the same moment, on a restaurant terrace nearby, the wind magically made two glasses dance unseen on a tablecloth. Meanwhile, in a 5th-floor flat, 28 Avenue Trudaine, Paris 9, returning from his best friend’s funeral, Eugène Colère erased his name from his address book.”
Amélie lives in this kind of world, where beautiful and unusual and ordinary things happen all the time. She is a dreamer is a vivid inner life — pictures talk, the television offers commentary on her life, and she imagines complex explanations for mundane things. It’s utterly charming.
And that’s why I love Amélie.
(image copyright UGC and/or Miramax Films, used without permission)
