Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie is a funny, tender romance with more visual business than it needs. Audrey Tautou makes its lonely heroine worth caring about, even when the film works too hard to charm us.
Amélie is a warm, funny romance with a properly affecting performance at its centre. Jean-Pierre Jeunet builds a Paris in which everyday life can be redirected by one woman’s imagination and interference. He wants us to enjoy the interference, which is a considerable request for anyone who prefers to manage their own affairs. Audrey Tautou makes us willing to listen, because her Amélie is much less certain about securing happiness for herself.
Tautou makes Amélie good company without insisting that we approve of everything she does. Her interest in other people has an eagerness that could become wearing, but the performance keeps her loneliness apparent. We were unexpectedly moved by the uncertainty in Tautou’s face when Amélie’s own longing interrupts her interest in everyone else. That hint of fear gives us a reason to care beyond the next ingenious piece of meddling.
Bruno Delbonnel’s cinematography helps make this idealised Paris feel like somewhere Amélie would invent for herself. The busy frames reward looking at their edges, though there are moments when we would prefer to concentrate on a face. Aline Bonetto’s production design fills the picture with carefully chosen clutter, giving the eccentric characters surroundings that seem to share their habits. The detail is pleasurable, even if little here has been allowed to look accidental.
Hervé Schneid’s editing keeps the visual jokes nimble, allowing the film to change direction without making each detour feel like a new beginning. There are simply too many of them, with another flourish arriving before the previous one has had time to settle. At 122 minutes, the film gives some of its smaller conceits more attention than they can bear. Yann Tiersen’s music gives the romance a gentleness that this restless approach sometimes hurries past. Its warmth works best without quite so many pictures competing to tell us how pleased we ought to be.
The screenplay by Jeunet and Guillaume Laurant understands the temptation to organise other people’s happiness. Amélie’s helpfulness can look controlling, and that makes her more interesting than a heroine who simply distributes favours. The jokes have enough bite to stop the affection for eccentrics becoming entirely reverent. Yet the film is sometimes so pleased with her ingenuity that it leaves us wondering whether the people being helped wanted help in the first place.
As a romantic comedy, it succeeds because the heroine’s awkwardness never makes her wish for love seem ridiculous. Jeunet is protective of his odd people, sometimes excessively so, but he takes their desire for company seriously. We recommend it, with some patience required for a director who rarely leaves a good idea undecorated. Anyone intent on being left alone may wish to keep their address from Amélie.
