I love a good movie

Visiting a fellow blogger today, I was vividly reminded how much I enjoy the movie, Amelie. It's a French film (2001) directed by Jeanne-Pierre Jeunet and stars Audrey Tautou as Amelie Poulain. Basically, it is a human comedy about love.

Amelie grew up lonely and isolated from other children. Her distant and taciturn father, an ex-army physician, mistakenly believed her to have a serious heart problem. Her mother died in a freak accident, which caused her father to withdraw even further into himself. Amelie is left to amuse herself and consequently develops a vivid imagination.

As a young woman, she happily lives alone and is employed as a waitress at a small cafe in Paris that seems to be a magnet for misfits and is owned by a former circus performer. Amelie spends her free time enjoying such simple pleasures as sticking her hands in sacks full of grain, cracking creme brulee with a teaspoon, skipping stones, and trying to guess how many couples in Paris are having an orgasm at the same time ("Fifteen", she announces).

But things get really interesting when she discovers a broken tile in her apartment wall. Behind the tiles, she finds a very old tin box full of treasures left by a little boy. She decides to try to find the person whose treasure this was, and return to him his prized possession, telling herself that if it makes him happy, she will devote her life to bringing happiness to others.

There are many wonderful characters in this film, which weaves a tale of a sweetly poignant, intricately detailed and beautifully filmed motion picture. It was nominated for five Academy Awards in 2001, won the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival  and was selected by the New York Times as one of " The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made".

The first clip is the movie trailer. I added the second clip because I just liked it.

 

I hope you do, too.

Until tomorrow, my friends . . .