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Third
Keswick Film Festival
15-17 February 2002 |
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“A merry, eccentric dance through an iridescent,
pulsating Paris.” - UNCUT
Amélie
Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet Screenplay by Guillaume Laurant
Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Amélie Poulain (Audrey Tautou, Venus Beaute, Le Libertin) has led a sheltered
life - wrongly diagnosed as having a heart condition and hence educated at home
by her over-protective parents, she retreats into a fantasy world of her own.
When Amélie finally leaves the suburbs and finds work as a waitress in
a Parisian café, life is pretty uneventful until her chance discovery
of a tin box containing a schoolboy's long forgotten memories. She returns the
box to its now middle-aged owner and it is then that Amelia discovers her true
vocation in life - righting wrongs and helping others find love and happiness
- which she seta about in her own unique and magical way.
One day, a young man drops his photo album at the railway station. This is Nino
(Mathieu Kassovitz, La Haine, The Fifth Element) and Amelia has fallen in love.
The album is a mystery in itself - Full of discarded shots from photo-booths,
among its rejected portraits one man's face reappears again and again. Amélie
may be tracking a ghost, but she is also tracking Nino, who works as a ghost
on a funfair ride. As Amélie sets out on a twisted path through the streets
of Montmartre to find the mysterious owner of the enigmatic album, she realises
that devising neat solutions is not as easy as it seems.
Amélie is a lot lighter in tone than Delicatessen, The City of
Lost Children, or Alien Resurrection. Does this mirror a change in your own
life?
"I did Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children with Marc Caro, and when
you work with someone it's impossible to get certain personal emotions into
a piece. So after The City of Lost Children I decide to separate and do something
of my own. I wanted to get a smile. That was the rule of the game."
Were you also reacting to working in Hollywood? You'd just come off Alien
Resurrection.
"Hollywood was a great experience. Obviously every day you have to fight
against the studio for the studio - it's a strange game - but it was amazing;
I'm ready to do another one if they offer me something interesting. In Europe
we think that in Hollywood you are slave, but I had complete artistic control.
The biggest restriction was about money, which I can understand because a science-fiction
film can be very expensive. It can explode. I am very proud of the film. I don't
want to change anything.
I recall that after Alien I really wanted to return to France and get some friends
together to make a 'small' film! Because although Alien was an extraordinary
adventure, it was also a huge weight to bear…actually, when Fox offered
me the picture, I was already working on what was to become Amélie. I
had plenty of ideas for scenes, situations, characters, many specific cravings
but the trouble was finding the common denominator in all of that. Basically,
I couldn't put my finger on what the film was about. That's where things stood
when I went to Hollywood. When I came back, I picked my project up where I had
left it."
Where do the stories in the film come from?
"They are all true. They're my life. There was just one story I didn't
use: it was about a rock-a-billy who gets his quiff stuck between the doors
of a subway train. The train is full and he is too ashamed to move, so he stays
like that until the doors open at the next stop. Maybe I will use the story
in my next movie.
We did invent some stories, like, for example, the one with the gnome going
round the world. I've heard this a lot of times, it's like a rumour. But the
story about the photograph album is a real story. A friend had a collection
exactly like in the film, and he found the guy exactly like in the film."
You based Amélie on Emily Watson, didn't you?
"When we write a script it is good to think about an actress as a guide.
I thought about Breaking the Waves because Bess [the character played by Emily
Watson] could be Amélie. When I asked Emily Watson if she wanted to do
the film, she told me, 'Yes, yes, I love the script.' We did some tests in French,
but she wasn't very good because she doesn't speak French. So I thought, 'OK,
I'm going to write another version in English.' I justified this by making the
character a small girl growing up in a suburb of London; when she becomes a
teenager, she moves to Paris. Later Emily told me that for personal reasons
she did not want to do the film. I was very disappointed. I then looked for
an actress in France. I saw only two women, and the first one was Audrey Tautou.
I am very happy now."
We don't really know her here.
"She did just one big film in France as a central character. It was called
Venus Beaute [directed by Tonie Marshall]. We have no stars in France but I
think she will be one; she is so inventive and she has a great sense of timing.
She can also play a character unlike herself, and that's pretty rare with young
people in France. I don't know why, it might be something to do with their schooling.
She also has this great, expressive face, with big hair and big eyes."
Why did you set the film in 1997?
"Because I needed to have a contemporary story. I thought it was very important
for the emotion that the audience be able to identify with Amélie and
Nino. The City of Lost Children was like a fairy tale, it was impossible to
identify with, and you stayed far away from the film. I didn't want that in
this one. It was therefore very important to be contemporary."
The death of Princess Diana plays a pivotal role in the film. What is
the significance of that event for you?
"I was in the States when the accident happened and I was shocked when
I came back to Paris. The exploitation of the accident by the press! Oh my God!
Everybody wanted to win money with the accident, and I was very upset. That
was the reason I used it. Also, Mother Theresa died two days later and nobody
cared, but she also helped people. Maybe even more than Lady Di."
The film is shot with a sense of child-like wonder. How easy was it to
get into that frame of mind?
"Jean Cocteau said we are children inside a big person. I think I've stayed
a child. A lot of people completely lose the spirit of childhood, I don't know
why, but for me it's natural. I play like Amélie a lot of the time. For
example, the game she does with the blue arrow on the street, I do that in my
flat to guide my wife to a gift."
The film was a huge popular hit in France, but it did receive some surprising
criticism form critics with a political agenda.
"Let me say something: we had more than 400 amazing reviews, and six bad
reviews. I am ready to sign for the rest of my life for these kinds of reviews.
But we had one very, very bad review, because this guy, Serge Kaganski, has
hated me from the beginning. We got the same thing from him with The City of
Lost Children. According to him I am a fascist, because there are no black guys
and no gay people in Amélie, and we must show gay people and black guys."
Despite what the critic thinks, Amelia has been championed by politicians
from both ends of the political spectrum in France.
"Liberation did a huge article about how the film has been embraced by
the left and the right. It's not a question of politics, everybody loves this
film because it's a positive story. You can be from the right or the left -
and there's not a huge difference in France, believe me - and feel better after
seeing it."
Born in 1955, French director/screenwriter
Jean-Pierre Jeunet began his movie career with two short animations, L'evasion
(The Escape, 1978) and Le Manege (The Merry-go-round, 1979). The latter earned
him a 1981 Cesar Award, and he also won an increasing range of festival prizes
for his next three short films: Le Bunker de la Derniere Rafale (1980), Pas
de Repos pour Billy Brakko (1984) and Foutaises (1990).
His first feature film, Delicatessen (co-directed with Marc Caro in 1991) was
an international success, winning some sixteen awards, including the 1992 Cesar
Awards for Best First Film, Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing and Best
Production Design. This was followed in 1995 by the darker fantasy of The City
of Lost Children, also co-directed with Caro, which was the Official Selection
at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. Breaking the pattern, Jeunet went to Hollywood
to make his next film, Alien Resurrection (also known as Alien IV) starring
Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder and Jeunet regular Dominique Pinon. Amelia, Jeunet's
fourth feature film, represents a return to Paris with a new co-writer, Guillaume
Laurant, and an altogether lighter tone.
"With echoes of Marcel Carne, but as vivid and fresh as we hoped a new
century might be, Amélie - both nostalgic and futuristic - should be
the foreign crossover movie of the year. It boasts flawless acting, a garden
gnome who travels the world, strawberries, a suicidal goldfish, a camera which
kills, a painter 'made of glass', some amazing video cut-ups, a horse who thinks
he's a bike, and a beautiful neck. The light is so sensuous you want to touch
it. Give the guns and cars a night off and just go see this. You'll fall in
love with films, and with love, all over again."
Chris Roberts, UNCUT
"It's a delicious hot-soak of a movie, a romantic all-out charmer that
immerse you in another world, in a fantasy Paris of loveable eccentrics, zinc-topped
bars, and sweetly bleating accordions…Blink-and-you'll-miss-them cut-aways
illustrate the characters' favourite things (bubble-wrap, the smell of gooseberries)
and secrets; superimpositions and rear-projection tricks show action in several
places at once. It's richly sensual, deeply romantic yet never cloying, and
one of the finest films of the year."
Leslie Felperin, THE BIG ISSUE
"President Jacques Chirac liked the film very much - but I don't think
it's true that he's using it in his next campaign"
Audrey Tautou, interviewed in YOU magazine
"Could the most popular French film of the year, or many a year, be a
two-hour party political broadcast for the far-right National front and Jean-Marie
Le Pen? If you watch Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain [the film's
original title, since shortened] this may not occur to you, unless you are a
French intellectual….The film presents Paris as a brightly lit village
with no graffiti, no gays and no social ills, other than the desperate, individual
search for love and affection."
John Lichfield, THE INDEPENDENT
"If Paris were destroyed tomorrow and the recipe for true love lost, archaeologists
could reconstruct both to perfection from just a reel of Amélie "
Variety
Compiled by Tyneside Cinema
10 Pilgrim Street Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 6QG
With the assistance of Northern Arts.
©
Keswick Film Club 2002
Keswick Film Club is a voluntarily-run, not-for-profit organisation.
Registered Charity Number 1083395