French polish
AMELIE
Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Cert. 15
´ This film is more sugary-sweet than a tub of candyfloss.
´ This film is at times spoilt by too much crudity and sex.
´ This film is in French with subtitles.
Well, that's the disclaimers out of the way. This film is brilliant.
Shy Amelie is brought up in a sheltered, overprotective family. As a girl without peers, she lives in the private and magical world of her imagination. When she grows up and leaves home to work as a waitress in Paris, she takes her naivete and vivid imagination with her.
Amelie's new grown-up world is populated by lovingly-drawn grotesques and eccentrics. You can't help but like these curious people. They are strange and disparate characters, but they all share one thing: loneliness.
So big-hearted Amelie sets out to bring happiness and love into their melancholy lives. The ingenious methods she uses bring a smile to your face. But one person is still sad, still lonely, still without love: Amelie.
Will she find happiness? And if she does, is she too shy to do anything about it?
The whole thing looks fantastic, the sun shining into its every corner. It's happy, it's sad, it's romantic, it's compelling and endlessly inventive. You'll cry at least four times (that's how many times I caught my wife sniffling). There's even a sub-plot featuring a globe-trotting garden gnome.
Yes, this film is far too crude at points. Yes, the hope the characters are searching for is a false one. As Christians, we know that true happiness can't be found in love or in friendship. Only Jesus Christ can fill the desperate holes in lonely lives.
But if you want to see what makes your next door neighbour smile like a child, or what your friends picture as real love and happiness, then Amelie gives us a world's-eye view.
Martin Cole
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