...it's hard not to like the movie Amelie, a gentle tribute to the power of sweetness and love.
Among those colorful characters I referred to are Amelie's father, unable to leave his house since his wife's death; an old artist who paints the same Renoir over and over again; a concierge who aches for her long-lost husband; a failed writer who hangs around the cafe all day; the aforementioned tyrannical grocer who shouts insults at his patient helper; and Georgette, Suzanne, and Gina, among her friends.
I wish I didn't have any lingering questions about the film; nonetheless, while I was enjoying it, I couldn't help feeling manipulated by it. It's a good kind of manipulation that most viewers won't mind, yet I felt the director was trying too hard to make his film and his characters appear sweet and charming to the point of sometimes becoming self-conscious about it. Certainly, Jeunet's colors and camera work and rapid-fire pacing are self-consciously artsy, as are the cute and gimmicky fantasy elements, the talking portraits and the moving statues of Amelie's fanciful mind. Perhaps too often the film cries out to be loved. Like Amelie herself, the film seems desperately to want to be appreciated, maybe too much. It won the hearts of most viewers, but it's easy to see how others could turn against it in a hurry.
Video:
This is one of those movies where the picture quality is a bit hard to judge because the director and cinematographer play around so much with colors and tone and textures. The whole movie looks very subdued, with, as I said before, golden hues, browns, reds, and greens predominating. Jeunet uses a delicate, pastel pallette one minute, a garish one the next. The sometimes dark, slightly blurred, sometimes bright and glossy appearance is not meant to look natural but is done intentionally to imbue the imagery with a romantic, fantasy quality. One could say Jeunet overuses the technique, but in any case the transfer itself seems faultless, perfectly clear and free of any distracting artifacts, in a screen ratio measuring about 2.13:1 across a normal TV and enhanced for widescreen playback.
Audio:
The disc reproduces the film's Dolby Digital 5.1 sound with ease. Its left-to-right stereo spread is wide, its dynamics are strong, and its bass is deep. Indeed, the director tends to punctuate a great number of telling moments with gigantic bass notes, perhaps again overdoing a good thing. The surround channels also do their part in creating the proper environmental ambience for each scene--birds, traffic, wind, subway trains, what-have-you. The clarity and discrete separation of sounds are among the technical highlights of the production.
Extras:
Clearly sensing the public's love for "Amelie," Buena Vista provide a two-disc set for promoting the film. The first disc contains the widescreen presentation of the movie, the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, a French-only spoken language track, English or Spanish subtitles, and seventeen scene selections. The only actual bonus items on the first disc are a pair of audio commentaries by director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, one in English, the other in French. Jeunet displays a wonderfully unassuming manner in his comments and a disarming sense of humor, telling us at the outset that if we don't want the poetry of the film spoiled, we shouldn't listen to him.
Disc two, as expected, contains the bulk of the special features. First, there's a twelve-minute set of interviews with the director and the cinematographer, Bruno Delbonnel, called "The Look of Amelie." Herein, the filmmakers discuss what they wanted their film to look like--bright, shiny, and color saturated--and why they wanted it to look that way. Next is a segment called "Fantasies of Audrey Tautou," merely a two-minute sequence of outtakes with the actress. Following that are several screen tests of Tautou, Urbain Cancelier, and Yolande Moreau. Then, there's a twenty-four minute "Q & A with Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet," filmed at American Cinematheque, January, 2002, followed by a shorter, five-minute Q & A session with the director and cast. After that, there's "An Intimate Chat with Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet" that lasts twenty minutes, so you can see we get quite a lot of M. Jeunet talking about his film, maybe more than we need. Interestingly, he says that he was inspired to do the DVD commentary after listening to and enjoying the audio commentaries of fellow directors M. Night Shyamalan for "The Sixth Sense" and Sylvester Stallone for "Rocky." The disc concludes with a storyboard comparison of the thrill-ride scene; a twelve-minute home movie, "Inside the Making of Amelie"; a brief set of cast and crew filmographies; a group of still galleries called the "Amelie Scrapbook"; a pan-and-scan U.S. theatrical trailer and a widescreen French trailer; and various TV spots for U.S. and French promotion.
Parting Thoughts:
It's hard to believe that anyone as pretty and bright and charming as Amelie wouldn't have a flock of boyfriends following her everywhere, but I suppose shyness has a way of frustrating all of a person's other, more ennobling features. It's also hard not to fall in love with Amelie herself while watching the movie, she's such a warm, bighearted young woman. In the end, it's hard not to like the movie "Amelie," a gentle tribute to the power of sweetness and love.
I wish I didn't have any lingering questions about the film; nonetheless, while I was enjoying it, I couldn't help feeling manipulated by it. It's a good kind of manipulation that most viewers won't mind, yet I felt the director was trying too hard to make his film and his characters appear sweet and charming to the point of sometimes becoming self-conscious about it. Certainly, Jeunet's colors and camera work and rapid-fire pacing are self-consciously artsy, as are the cute and gimmicky fantasy elements, the talking portraits and the moving statues of Amelie's fanciful mind. Perhaps too often the film cries out to be loved. Like Amelie herself, the film seems desperately to want to be appreciated, maybe too much. It won the hearts of most viewers, but it's easy to see how others could turn against it in a hurry.
Video:
This is one of those movies where the picture quality is a bit hard to judge because the director and cinematographer play around so much with colors and tone and textures. The whole movie looks very subdued, with, as I said before, golden hues, browns, reds, and greens predominating. Jeunet uses a delicate, pastel pallette one minute, a garish one the next. The sometimes dark, slightly blurred, sometimes bright and glossy appearance is not meant to look natural but is done intentionally to imbue the imagery with a romantic, fantasy quality. One could say Jeunet overuses the technique, but in any case the transfer itself seems faultless, perfectly clear and free of any distracting artifacts, in a screen ratio measuring about 2.13:1 across a normal TV and enhanced for widescreen playback.
Audio:
The disc reproduces the film's Dolby Digital 5.1 sound with ease. Its left-to-right stereo spread is wide, its dynamics are strong, and its bass is deep. Indeed, the director tends to punctuate a great number of telling moments with gigantic bass notes, perhaps again overdoing a good thing. The surround channels also do their part in creating the proper environmental ambience for each scene--birds, traffic, wind, subway trains, what-have-you. The clarity and discrete separation of sounds are among the technical highlights of the production.
Extras:
Clearly sensing the public's love for "Amelie," Buena Vista provide a two-disc set for promoting the film. The first disc contains the widescreen presentation of the movie, the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, a French-only spoken language track, English or Spanish subtitles, and seventeen scene selections. The only actual bonus items on the first disc are a pair of audio commentaries by director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, one in English, the other in French. Jeunet displays a wonderfully unassuming manner in his comments and a disarming sense of humor, telling us at the outset that if we don't want the poetry of the film spoiled, we shouldn't listen to him.
Disc two, as expected, contains the bulk of the special features. First, there's a twelve-minute set of interviews with the director and the cinematographer, Bruno Delbonnel, called "The Look of Amelie." Herein, the filmmakers discuss what they wanted their film to look like--bright, shiny, and color saturated--and why they wanted it to look that way. Next is a segment called "Fantasies of Audrey Tautou," merely a two-minute sequence of outtakes with the actress. Following that are several screen tests of Tautou, Urbain Cancelier, and Yolande Moreau. Then, there's a twenty-four minute "Q & A with Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet," filmed at American Cinematheque, January, 2002, followed by a shorter, five-minute Q & A session with the director and cast. After that, there's "An Intimate Chat with Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet" that lasts twenty minutes, so you can see we get quite a lot of M. Jeunet talking about his film, maybe more than we need. Interestingly, he says that he was inspired to do the DVD commentary after listening to and enjoying the audio commentaries of fellow directors M. Night Shyamalan for "The Sixth Sense" and Sylvester Stallone for "Rocky." The disc concludes with a storyboard comparison of the thrill-ride scene; a twelve-minute home movie, "Inside the Making of Amelie"; a brief set of cast and crew filmographies; a group of still galleries called the "Amelie Scrapbook"; a pan-and-scan U.S. theatrical trailer and a widescreen French trailer; and various TV spots for U.S. and French promotion.
Parting Thoughts:
It's hard to believe that anyone as pretty and bright and charming as Amelie wouldn't have a flock of boyfriends following her everywhere, but I suppose shyness has a way of frustrating all of a person's other, more ennobling features. It's also hard not to fall in love with Amelie herself while watching the movie, she's such a warm, bighearted young woman. In the end, it's hard not to like the movie "Amelie," a gentle tribute to the power of sweetness and love.
Average user rating (1-5):
[release]10115[/release]