Amelie Tab

[Melissa Hassel]

Amliewas released theatrically in France on 25 April 2001 by UGC-Fox Distribution and in Germany on 16 August 2001 by Prokino Filmverleih. The film received widespread critical acclaim, with major praise for Tautou's performance, the cinematography, visuals, production design, sound design, editing, musical score, writing and Jeunet's direction. Amlie won Best Film at the European Film Awards, four Csar Awards, including Best Film and Best Director, and two British Academy Film Awards, including Best Original Screenplay. It was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Foreign Language Film and Best Original Screenplay. The film was an enormous commercial success, grossing $174.2 million worldwide against a budget of $10 million, and is one of the biggest international successes for a French film.

On 31 August 1997, startled by the news of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, Amlie drops a plastic perfume-stopper, which dislodges a wall tile and accidentally reveals an old metal box which contains childhood memorabilia hidden by a boy who lived in her apartment decades earlier. Amlie resolves to track down the boy and return the box to him. She promises herself that if it makes him happy, she will devote her life to bringing happiness to others.

After asking the apartment's concierge and several old tenants about the boy's identity, Amlie meets her reclusive neighbour, Raymond Dufayel, an artist with brittle bone disease who replicates Pierre-Auguste Renoir's 1881 painting Luncheon of the Boating Party every year. He recalls the boy's name as "Bretodeau". Amlie finds the man, Dominique Bretodeau, and surreptitiously gives him the box. Moved to tears by the discovery and the memories it holds, Bretodeau resolves to reconcile with his estranged daughter and the grandson he has never met. Amlie happily embarks on her new mission.

Amlie secretly executes complex schemes that positively affect the lives of those around her. She escorts a blind man to the Mtro station while giving him a rich description of the street scenes he passes. She persuades her father to follow his dream of touring the world by stealing his garden gnome and having a flight attendant friend mail pictures of it posing with landmarks from all over the world. She starts a romance between her hypochondriacal co-worker Georgette and Joseph, a patron of the cafe. She convinces Madeleine Wallace, the concierge of her block of flats, that the husband who abandoned her had sent her a final conciliatory love letter just before his accidental death years before. She plays practical jokes on Collignon, the nasty greengrocer. Mentally exhausted, Collignon no longer abuses his meek, good-natured assistant Lucien. A delighted Lucien subsequently takes charge at the grocery stand.

Dufayel, having observed Amlie, begins a conversation with her about his painting. Although he has copied the same Renoir painting 20 times, he has never quite captured the look of the girl drinking a glass of water. They discuss the meaning of this character, and over several conversations, Amlie begins projecting her loneliness onto the image. Dufayel recognizes this and uses the girl in the painting to push Amlie to examine her attraction to a quirky young man, Nino Quincampoix, who collects the discarded photographs of strangers from passport photo booths. When Amlie bumps into Nino a second time, she realizes she is falling in love with him. He accidentally drops a photo album in the street. Amlie retrieves it.

Amlie plays a cat-and-mouse game with Nino around Paris before returning his treasured album anonymously. After arranging a meeting at the 2 Moulins, Amlie panics and tries to deny her identity. Her co-worker, Gina, concerned for Amlie's well-being, screens Nino for her; Joseph's comment about this misleads Amlie to believe she has lost Nino to Gina. It takes Dufayel's insight to give her the courage to pursue Nino, resulting in a romantic night together and the beginning of a relationship. The film ends as Amlie experiences a moment of happiness she has found for herself.

In his DVD commentary, Jeunet explains that he originally wrote the role of Amlie for the English actress Emily Watson. In that first draft, Amlie's father was an Englishman living in London. However, Watson's French was not strong, and when she became unavailable to shoot the film, owing to a conflict with the filming of Gosford Park (2001), Jeunet rewrote the screenplay for a French actress. Audrey Tautou was the first actress he auditioned having seen her on the poster for the 1999 film Venus Beauty Institute.

The filmmakers made use of computer-generated imagery (including computer animation),[8][9] and a digital intermediate.[10] The studio scenes were filmed in the MMC Studios Coloneum in Cologne (Germany). The film shares many of the themes in its plot with the second half of the 1994 film Chungking Express.[11][12]

The film was released in France, Belgium, and French-speaking western Switzerland in April 2001, with subsequent screenings at various film festivals followed by releases around the world. It received limited releases in North America, the United Kingdom, and Australasia later in 2001.

Cannes Film Festival selector Gilles Jacob described Amlie as "uninteresting", and therefore it was not screened at the festival, although the version he viewed was an early cut without music. The absence of Amlie at the festival caused something of a controversy because of the warm welcome by the French media and audience in contrast with the reaction of the selector.[13] David Martin-Jones, in an article in Senses of Cinema, stated that the film "[wears] its national [French] identity on its sleeve" and that this attracted both audiences of mainstream films and those of arthouse ones.[14]

In 2021, Newen Connect's TF1 Studio signed a deal with UGC for international distribution and sales rights to its films, including Amlie. The film was then re-released in multiple countries for its 20th anniversary, including on 11 May 2021 in Italy, by BIM Distribuzione.[15][16][17][4]

In February 2022, while discussing the legacy of Amlie in an interview with The New York Times, Jeunet stated that U.S. distribution rights to the film, previously held by Miramax Zo, had been acquired by Sony Pictures Classics, with the company planning a re-release in the future.[18] While the distributor did confirm this news, no further developments were reported until late December 2023, when Sony announced their acquisition of distribution rights to the film for North America excluding French Canada and scheduled the film for a theatrical re-release in 250 theatres in the United States on 14 February 2024.[19]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 90% approval rating based on 230 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "The feel-good Amlie is a lively, fanciful charmer, showcasing Audrey Tautou as its delightful heroine."[20] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 69 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "generally positive" reviews.[21]

The film was attacked by critic Serge Kaganski of Les Inrockuptibles for an unrealistic and picturesque vision of a bygone French society with few ethnic minorities.[24] Jeunet dismissed the criticism by pointing out that the photo collection contains pictures of people from numerous ethnic backgrounds, and that Jamel Debbouze, who plays Lucien, is of Moroccan descent.[citation needed]

The film opened on 432 screens in France and grossed 43.2 million French Franc ($6.2 million) in its opening week, placing it at number one.[25] It stayed in the top 10 for 22 weeks.[26] It was the highest-grossing film in France for the year with a gross of $41 million.[27] The film also grossed $33 milion in the United States and Canada theatrically,[4] making it the highest-grossing French-language film of all time in North America.[28][29]

On 23 August 2013, composer Dan Messe, one of the founders and members of the band Hem, confirmed speculation that he would be writing the score for a musical adaptation of Amlie, collaborating with Craig Lucas and Nathan Tysen.[41][42] Messe also confirmed he would be composing all original music for the show and not using the Yann Tiersen score.[43] The musical adaptation premiered at the Berkeley Repertory Theater in August 2015.[44] It opened on Broadway in March 2017 and closed in May 2017.[45] The production started its pre-Broadway engagement at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles in December 2016, with Phillipa Soo in the title role.[46] A London production opened in 2020, with Australian, German, Dutch, and Finnish productions set to open or resume pending the cessation of restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The film has no overall worldwide distributor, but Blu-ray Discs have been released in Canada and Australia. The first release occurred in Canada in September 2008 by TVA Films. This version did not contain any English subtitles and received criticisms regarding picture quality.[48] In November 2009, an Australian release occurred. This time the version contained English subtitles and features no region coding.[49] Momentum Pictures released a Blu-ray in the UK on 17 October 2011. The film is also available in HD on iTunes and other digital download services.

In the United Kingdom, it was 2013's tenth best-selling foreign-language film on physical home video formats, and the year's third best-selling French film (below The Intouchables and Rust and Bone).[50]

A species of frog was named Cochranella amelie. The scientist who named it said: "This new species of glass frog is for Amlie, protagonist of the extraordinary movie Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amlie Poulain; a film where little details play an important role in the achievement of joie de vivre; like the important role that glass frogs and all amphibians and reptiles play in the health of our planet".[52] The species was described in the scientific journal Zootaxa in an article entitled "An enigmatic new species of Glassfrog (Amphibia: Anura: Centrolenidae) from the Amazonian Andean slopes of Ecuador".[52]The film is also the inspiration behind a painting game called t where players can paint Montreal into life.[53]

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