#25 – Amélie (Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain)

Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

“Une femme sans amour, c’est comme une fleur sans soleil”

If you like the colours green and red, you are going to love this movie! Amélie tries much to hard to be art, and forgets about the beauty in simplicity in the process. I find this very ironic, as the main theme in the movie is about finding beauty in the simple little things in life. You can tell that every single frame has been analyzed, pondered and considered very carefully before it was shoot, and I very much doubt that very little, if any, artistic freedom has been used on the set of this movie. The red/green colouring throughout the movie gets frustratingly unpleasant to watch, and most of all looks like a music video from the early 90’s. It’s utterly depressing to watch Amélie mangling in other peoples lives and being confused about some just as boring guy – Not that a movie with a depressing theme always is bad, but I highly doubt that Jean-Pierre Jeunet set out to make that his main message in this movie. The movie is filled with repetitive characters that are impossible to relate too, they are all without dimensions and there is absolutely no growth or transition in the main character, and you are filled with a feeling of dullness and monotonous – no laughs, no cries, no suspense, no anticipation (will se talk to him, wont she talk to him… Zzzzz). This movie is two hours long. Two hours of a cardboard girl skipping around Paris, seeing things in her own quirky and unoriginal way. If I have to point out something positive about this movie, it would be the script. The script is actually quite good, and original. It’s really just a shame that it has been covered in all this red and green plastic, and flat-sided characters. I would have loved to see this script made in the same way as Christoffer Nolans “Following”. A low budget, underplayed approach would have done the script much more justice, and it would have been a better contrast towards the real world, instead of a comic book world where emotions apparently are banned.           This is a movie that tries to be artistic, but fails miserably, as no emotions are provoked or brought out. And that should be the main foundation of art.  I guess it would have worked as a short, but only if Amélie was killed at the climax.

4/10