The Null Device

I went to the cinema to see a preview screening of Amélie, the latest film from Jean-Pierre Jeunet (the co-director of Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, the latter of which is perhaps my favourite film of all time). It is the story of a shy, introverted young woman who is somewhat of a dreamer; I won't say much more as not to give too much away. It is indeed excellent; the visuals are very vivid and fantastic (as one would expect from Jeunet), and the film is full of quirky characters and great moments (and equally great asides), with some echoes of Jeunet's previous films showing through. Audrey Tautou is great as the lead, playing the part with verve, charm and warmth. I also recognised a number of actors from Jeunet's previous films in Amélie (for one, the guy who played the clones in TCoLC makes an appearance as the tape-recorder-wielding nutcase ex-boyfriend of one of Amélie's coworkers).

Unlike the earlier films, though, it is not set in a dark fairy-tale world, but in modern-day Paris, and it's more of a feel-good film. (One could even call it *cough* a romantic comedy *cough*, though it certainly doesn't follow the Hollywood/Working Title formula. Nora Ephron this ain't.)

Anyway, Amélie is very highly recommended. (If you're in Melbourne, it's showing at the Nova and Kino, and apparently goes on wider release on Boxing Day.)

There are 4 comments on "":

Posted by: Paulo http:// Fri Dec 7 21:17:14 2001

That actor would be Dominique Pinon, who played already the main character in "Delicatessen" and also had a role (from what I heard) in "Alien Resurrection". I saw him too in a CGI short film made by Marc Caro years ago.

Posted by: Graham http://grudnuk.com Sat Dec 8 11:52:00 2001

Yeah. Was Robert Perlmann (if that's his name) in this one too?

Hmm. Two decent films to see come Boxing Day. woo-hoo!

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Sat Dec 8 13:59:34 2001

yes, it was Dominique Pinon.

Ron Perlman didn't appear (anyway, he was an American actor borrowed for TCoLC), though the photo-booth guy was "Rufus", who (I believe) was one of the Cyclops in TCoLC.

I read that they wanted to get Emily Watson to play Amélie, but ended up casting the unknown Audrey Tautou because she wasn't available.

Posted by: Luke http://www.captainfez.com/blog/ Mon Dec 10 10:28:20 2001

Ha! See? I _was_ right! The film's great - and if you can get a hold of it, the soundtrack's none too shabby, either. There's a lot of sniping going on about the flick, back in France; people are claiming it's an airbrushed portrayal of Montmartre, and that it's similar to a Leni Riefenstahl work. Which seems a bit much, frankly...