Amelie

Plot:

Amelie is a French film, about a girl who suffered a childhood of despair and loneliness. She spent only limited amounts of time with her father, who then believes she has heart problems due to her fast hear beat on the occasions that she actually gets to spend time with her dad. Due to this suspected heart defect, Amelie’s father declares her unfit for school. So Amelie does not have any friends, so instead, she lets her imagination take her away to find happiness. Further on in the film Amelia drops something on the floor, revealing a secret tile on her wall, in which contains a small box of treasured items left by a young boy many years prior to her finding it. She is then determined to return the box to the owner, after numerous attempts to find him, she eventually comes across the owner of the treasures. After seeing his reactions, Amelie seems to have a change it thought about life, making sure from then on she helps anyone she can. In a way she becomes a new person, dedicating life to other people. Especially her father, as she did not spend a great amount of time with him as a child, she tries to spend time with him and get him away from his beloved gnome. Once Amelie spends a lot of time helping others, it eventually comes clear to her that she has not thought about herself in a long time, which is depriving her of finding love that she once dreamed about, it seems as though she is too nice to others, that she is unable to find someone as nice as her that she is compatible with. Amelia finds an album of unwanted pictures, again she is intrigued to find the collector of these photos, which eventually leads to her falling in love with him. 

At parts in the film, Amelie actually addresses the audience, choosing to put this in the film helps greatly to involve the viewer to let them know Amelie’s actual opinion on what is happening in the film. 

Most of the film is warmly toned, with reds especially, this helps to create the atmosphere of the film, helping it to stay relatively romantic as well as times when serious moments, as well as funny moments also occur. Also, sepia tones are also used, this helps the audience to know it is set in the past. It makes things seem aged. 

The opening sequence shows Amelie’s childhood and different things that have occurred, a simple and almost unnoticed sound effect used, is clicking, whilst the opening takes place, you can hear the clicking over it just for a few seconds, almost like the film is just getting started up, then throughout the sequence, non diegetic sound is added to add emphasis to what is going on, such as where she makes the line of paper men, you can very clearly and loudly hear them rustle. Also when she puts her finger around the wine glass you can hear the noise it makes easily. 

Depth of field is also used throughout the film effectively, helping you to focus on individual things in the scene. 

Montages and flashback are used at the start, showing Amelie’s childhood, showing many different times of her life, also during the film where Amelie is thinking about how many sexual acts are taking place at one time. There are many different cuts and jerk movements allowing the scene to cut from different places very quickly, as well as this the sound changes are also noticeable for every cut in those scenes. 

Amelie is a young woman, who has not had much experience of life. Her childhood was spent alone with only her imagination to entertain herself. During her childhood her only friend was her per fish. Which just so happened to be suicidal. After her mothers death in Notre Dame, she lived with her father. Who is obsessed with garden gnomes. As life commences, Amelie becomes more and more confident, eventually leading her to wanting to help everyone.