Amidst the mundanity of modern day motion pictures, having to deal with lots and lots of remakes and the zealots of box-office goldmine, only a very few could rise to platform and can be called a film indeed. Amelie is one of those films. In fact, Hollywood's not written all over it - this is a French film. And amidst the world where everybody almost hates the French, one could not avoid admiring this French lass, Amelie, with a heart of gold.
Amelie is the portrait of a person in which we humans mostly lack, selflessness. It is a story of a girl who grew up believing that she's a bad luck magnet, having to deal with the death of her Mum after an unfortunate suicide at Notre Dame Cathedral and to grow up with his hopeless father, who spends almost all his life building a little shrine in their own backyard. She was a kid that felt out-of-place, yet she never complained, not once. Instead, she finds her own happiness in her own tiny world of innocence she braves; she's happy about little things in life, like throwing stones at the river, dipping her fingers in a sack of wheat grains and standing at her rooftop, looking all over Paris and guessing how many people are orgasming at that certain point of time. Oh yes, Amelie is what we call - no, not weird - but eccentric in a good way.
It was on an evening when she felt her life has changed forever when she suddenly heard the news that Princess Diana died in a car crash, making the cologne ball in her hand slip into the floor and led her into something that was hidden in her bathroom floor. She discovered a diminutive box, which was stowed away for ages, dusty and shabby, containing treasures that one could have during childhood years. She discovers by that time that she's a spirit destined to find immaculate happiness in the happiness of others. And Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the director, perfectly guides us into a visually stunning journey to Amelie's charitable and benevolent adventure towards helping the people around her. But in the pinnacle of her works, she also realises that she has done so many things that she had left herself alone. Until she finds a picture book that would lead her to the man in her life.
Amelie never leaves us uncaptivated. Its charm, its wit, its good-natured selfless indulgence is all magic, yet the realism of it strikes us heavily. It would make us humans feel pity about ourselves because we tried to live life sometimes in a selfish way, and Amelie is a kind of film that has the magic to change that behaviour in us. It is a romantic comedy, yet at the same time, a very wholesome and intelligent undertaking about life in the eyes of a very innocent and kind-hearted woman. Its making is very passionate and every scene captured in the lenses is worth the style and effort. This film strives to be very original also and Jeunet proves to be a master of his own crafts, after having watched the magnificent A Very Long Engagement, which also stars Audrey Tautou. By the way, Tautou is splendid in this film. After you leave your seat after the credits roll, you can't help but get wonderstruck by her ingenius performance as Amelie.

Rating: A-