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A French Rushmore for Women
Amélie is a niece of those Jane Austen lasses who,
rather than partake of the joys of sex and companionship themselves,
meddle in the business of others. She's got a streak of Emma,
and also Princess Di: two European icons of regal goodwill,
notoriously at odds with princes and Knightleys. Amélie's
childhood is shaped by protective neuroses; her adult timidity
celebrated as purity of heart and soul. She's sugar sweet,
of course, but Amélie is in dire need of shot of vodka
in her sirot, I think. So we chart her story as an
awakening from a dream world in which she vicariously lives
through the jollies she surreptiously procures for others.
Our cheer is directed at her arrival with us in the tangible,
sensual world.
Amélie suffers the aspersions Austen's critics
have proffered on her novels: the story is too dainty to amount
to much; the foibles of mannered people are a target unworthy
the serious writer. Acceptance of this criticism depends largely
on one's taste in writing; Austen's devotees, a legion dwarfing
Napoleon's and Hitler's combined, delight in her delicate
word play and wry humor—a tone to match its subject.
Quite shocking that Jeunet—last seen resurrecting Ripley
in the fourth Alien, scaring the kiddies with an avante-guard
fairytale freakshow The City of the Lost Children,
and serving up the tenants above the Delicatessen—here
tries to create a cotton candy carnival ride. As with Austen,
Jeunet just wants us to have fun, and the swift spirit of
Austen's prose is somewhat captured in his opening sequence.
We meet Amélie and her crew at breakneck speed; the
jokes whizz by, stop momentarily, then buzz away. Much of
what substitutes for character development is presented to
us by lists of peculiar likes and dislikes. This sounds like
a trap, but Jeunet pulls it off fairly well. The generous
would say that his neat camera tricks (a sad Amélie
cries, and then liquifies and crashes to the floor, etc.)
evoke the sharp playfulness of Austenian prose; the less-impressed
would call it gimmickry without purpose.
I'll give Jeunet the benefit of the doubt. I laughed; I rollicked;
I enjoyed the first half of the film. Without much story to
tell, though, Amélie's adventures wear on us
a bit, like the life of the party hanging around after everyone's
gone home. At least Jeunet doesn't attempt political moralizing,
like Lasse Hallstrom's similiarly themed, but entirely awful
Chocolat. That film awkwardly attempted some strange
connection between religious oppression and the talismanic
power of bon bons. In fact, Audrey Tautou, the young actress
blessed with the part of Amélie, kind of reminds me
of a bon bon herself. Anyway, Amélie aims low
and hits its mark, rallying masses of introverts to celebrate
their own social awkwardness. I kept wishing that Amélie
would somehow run into Max Fisher, formally of Rushmore Academy,
who should now be on a foreign semester from some Ivy League
university. They are opposite personalities (Max the aggressive
extrovert; Amélie the shy wallflower), but I could
picture them together, holding hands in Montmarte, discovering
that their common bond is sexual energy channeled into an
endearing lack of social grace. They've both overcome that
to find happiness during our time with them at the movies,
and I think that's what has drawn record audiences to Amélie,
and why Rushmore is on its way to genuine classic status:
Both empathesize with who we were, and who we are now.
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