Amélie (2001)

Amélie is an innocent and naive girl in Paris with her own sense of justice. She decides to help those around her and, along the way, discovers love.

Director:

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Writers:

Guillaume Laurant (scenario), Jean-Pierre Jeunet (scenario)

Stars:

Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Rufus

Top Rated Movies #113 | Nominated for 5 Oscars. Another 59 wins & 69 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Audrey Tautou	...	Amélie Poulain
Mathieu Kassovitz	...	Nino Quincampoix
Rufus	...	Raphaël Poulain
Lorella Cravotta	...	Amandine Poulain
Serge Merlin	...	Raymond Dufayel
Jamel Debbouze	...	Lucien
Clotilde Mollet	...	Gina
Claire Maurier	...	Madame Suzanne - la patronne du café
Isabelle Nanty	...	Georgette
Dominique Pinon	...	Joseph
Artus de Penguern	...	Hipolito
Yolande Moreau	...	Madeleine Wallace
Urbain Cancelier	...	Collignon
Maurice Bénichou	...	Dominique Bretodeau
Michel Robin	...	Mr. Collignon

Storyline

Amélie is a story about a girl named Amélie whose childhood was suppressed by her Father's mistaken concerns of a heart defect. With these concerns Amélie gets hardly any real-life contact with other people. This leads Amélie to resort to her own fantastical world and dreams of love and beauty. She later on becomes a young woman and moves to the central part of Paris as a waitress. After finding a lost treasure belonging to the former occupant of her apartment, she decides to return it to him. After seeing his reaction and his new found perspective - she decides to devote her life to the people around her. Such as, her father who is obsessed with his garden-gnome, a failed writer, a hypochondriac, a man who stalks his ex girlfriends, the "ghost," a suppressed young soul, the love of her life and a man whose bones are as brittle as glass. But after consuming herself with these escapades - she finds out that she is disregarding her own life and damaging her quest for love. Amélie then ...

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Plot Keywords:

voice over narration | female protagonist | paris france | france | montmartre paris | 

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Taglines:

She'll change your life.

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Genres:

Comedy | Romance

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for sexual content

Did You Know?

Trivia

In the introduction, when the narrator says "nine months later, she was born," the footage shows a pregnant woman's stomach growing larger during her nine months of pregnancy. This footage was taken from a time-lapse film called 17 Seconds to Sophie (1998). It was shot in 16mm of the mother (Carol Cote) by the father (Bill Cote) of the daughter (Sophie Cote) using a Bolex mounted on a wall. The dad clicked off two frames a day, for the entire nine months. The lighting was fixed, the background was fixed, the focus was fixed. The only thing that changed was the mother's stomach and her hair (you can see the length of her hair growing and receding with the passage of time). The film won first prize in the Shorts International Film Festival (experimental category) in New York, 1998.

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Goofs

When Amélie talks to Georgette about Joseph, she says, "He always sits here, right?"(Il s'assied toujours là, d'accord?) Georgette responds "Ben, oui." (Basically, "um, yeah.") The English subtitle "at number 8" (huit) is incorrect.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Narrator: On September 3rd 1973, at 6:28pm and 32 seconds, a bluebottle fly capable of 14,670 wing beats a minute landed on Rue St Vincent, Montmartre. At the same moment, on a restaurant terrace nearby, the wind magically made two glasses dance unseen on a tablecloth. Meanwhile, in a 5th-floor flat, 28 Avenue Trudaine, Paris 9, returning from his best friend's funeral, Eugène Colère erased his name from his address book. At the same moment, a sperm with one X chromosome, belonging to ...

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Crazy Credits

The ending credits for the lead actors are presented as live action scene of photograph album pages being turned one by one, featuring photo booth pictures of the actors which have been torn up and pieced together.

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Connections

Referenced in Nostalgia Critic: Alien: Resurrection (2012)

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Soundtracks

Father's Little Dividend
Written by Albert Sendrey (as A. Sendrey)
Publishing 1951 by EMJ Catalogue Partnership
EMJ Robbins Catalogue Inc.
EMJ Catalogue Partnership France

User Reviews

Fantastic...

It is the best film i've ever seen.Only the French could make films as good as this. Amélie explores the trivial things in life and it brings you to some realisations of your own in that our lives are so simple and we only need the simplest of things to keep us happy. Amélie is a must for anyone

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook Official site

Country:

France Germany

Language:

French Russian English

Release Date:

8 February 2002 (USA)

Also Known As:

Amélie

Filming Locations:

France

Box Office

Budget:

$10,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$136,470, 4 November 2001

Gross USA:

$33,225,499

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$173,924,742

Company Credits

Production Co:

Claudie Ossard Productions, Union Générale Cinématographique (UGC), Victoires Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

122 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital

Color:

Color Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.39 : 1