Audrey Tautou makes charm persuasive by letting us see the uncertainty beneath it. Amélie gives us the clearest reason to rate her, though her later choices suggest how much the ingénue label leaves out.
Fi1m perspective
In Amélie (2001), Audrey Tautou’s face changes when the heroine’s own longing interrupts her interest in everyone else. The eagerness gives way to uncertainty, and we can see how much harder she finds the prospect of arranging her own happiness. We were unexpectedly moved by that hesitation, because it exposes the fear beneath her busy attention to other people. Tautou makes us care about a woman whose interference might otherwise become rather trying.
International recognition followed Amélie, but her subsequent choices were not confined to variations on its heroine. An early English-language role came in Stephen Frears’s socially engaged thriller Dirty Pretty Things (2002), followed by a reunion with Jean-Pierre Jeunet for the period drama A Very Long Engagement (2004). She also played Martine across Cédric Klapisch’s ensemble trilogy. These choices give us more to consider than the familiar ingénue description.
Yet Amélie remains the performance that most clearly explains our interest in her. Jeunet fills his Paris with opportunities for her heroine to intervene, and his determination to charm us sometimes makes the romance feel overworked. Tautou keeps the loneliness apparent without making the character’s eagerness seem false: we can enjoy her company and still question what she does. The film’s excess of visual business is a useful warning about how to use her, since her face has already given us a reason to stay.
The later move towards harder characters was deliberate. Coco Before Chanel (2009), in which she plays Gabrielle Chanel, offered a more authoritative role. Thérèse Desqueyroux (2012) gave her a complex dramatic lead, drawing on her ability to convey internal conflict quietly. Neither choice fits comfortably with the idea that she exists merely to be endearing.
Her screen roles have become fewer since the mid-2010s. That need not mean there is less left for her to do: the uncertainty in Amélie is a quality worth asking more of, especially in characters we are not expected to like. We would welcome a part that lets her be difficult without apologising for it.
Biography
Audrey Justine Tautou is a French actress. She made her feature film debut in Venus Beauty Institute (1999), for which she won the César Award for Most Promising Actress. She trained at the Cours Florent in Paris.
Tautou achieved international recognition for her lead role as Amélie Poulain in Amélie (2001). Subsequent roles include Mathilde in A Very Long Engagement (2004), Sophie Neveu in The Da Vinci Code (2006) and Gabrielle Chanel in Coco Before Chanel (2009). She has been nominated three times for the César Award for Best Actress and twice for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. In 2004 she was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
