Movie #46 – Amelie (2001) - 122 min, cert 15.
Amelie Poulain (Audrey Tatou) is a young Parisienne woman who lives a quiet little life. She has small but tidy apartment and an innocuous job as a waitress at a local café. One day she discovers a small metal box that has been hidden her apartment by a small boy many years ago. Inside the box are an assortment of childish treasures – marbles, toy soldiers, that sort of thing. She decides to track down the owner of the box and return it to him anonymously. When she sees the effect her act of kindness has, she makes a decision to make random acts of kindness a personal hobby. In the course of this, she comes across a man who takes her interest, and they start leaving each other notes and puzzles as a kind of bizarre courtship.
One of the reasons I’m doing this challenge is to watch the old classics that I wouldn’t get round to watching otherwise. Another reason is to discover little gems like Amelie. Under any other circumstances, a foreign language rom-com like this just wouldn’t appeal, so I would never have seen it. But I’m so glad I did, because this film is wonderful. It’s extremely quirky and an absolute joy to watch. It had me smiling and laughing all the way through.
I’m obtaining these films by and large, by downloading them from the internet. Other than the ones I already own on DVD of course. I have had trouble with some of the foreign language films, trying to find copies that come with embedded subtitles. For this one I tried several versions, but none were what I was looking for, so eventually I gave up and bought a cheap copy from ebay. I’m quite glad I did, because this is probably a film I will come back to and watch again at some point.
Score: 10/10 – A real find. Thoroughly enjoyable.
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