Amelie

Amelie (2001)

Plot summary

(4 votes)

(Flashback) As a child, Amelie lived a very sheltered life, didn't go to school, and had no friends. When she was six, her mother suddenly died, leaving her with her indifferent father.

(The present) Now she is 23, and having left home, she is working in a cafe in Paris. On the day Princess Diana is killed in a car crash, she discovers a box hidden in her flat, containing some treasured objects that a young boy hid away in the 1950's. She decides to find him, and give it back to him.

She succeeds, making this man happy, and now sets out to make everybody she can happy, in subtle and amusing ways. (One example: her neighbour tells her a story about her late husband. Amelie reads some letters from this man, "invents" a new letter by piecing together some of the old ones, and sends it to the neighbour, with a note saying it was lost for 30 years.)

But she doesn't do so well in making herself happy. Nino, a young man who Amelie fancies, collects discarded photos from photo booths, and sticks them in an album, which he loses. Amelie finds it, and devises complicated ways of returning it to him. Although she loves him, can Amelie bring herself to meet him?

In the photo album, there is also a mysterious man who keeps reappearing: taking his picture in photo booths all over Paris, only to throw them away. Is he someone afraid of growing old, or a dead man who is afraid of being forgotten?

Batty

Amelie mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Nino goes to 'Les deux Moulins' for the first time, we can see Amelie writing the menu on a glass right behind him. A few shots later, we see the glass again and the handwriting is quite different. That's easy to see if you look carefully at the 'd'. Later on, we see the glass once more, and the handwriting has changed again. (01:32:55)

More mistakes in Amelie

Bretodeau, The Box Man: Life's funny. To a kid, time always drags. Suddenly you're fifty. All that's left of your childhood... fits in a rusty little box.

More quotes from Amelie

Trivia: Amelie is shot in two main thematic colours: red and green, which vary according to situations and moods. Watch it again with that in mind.

Jeff Walker

More trivia for Amelie

Question: What is the significance of the second video Amelie gives the glass man? I understand the first one - the horse is with the cyclists, and yet different from them, like the girl in the painting. But I don't get the second one.

Answer: As far as I can see, Amelie is just trying to give him a view of the world, so he doesn't become entirely cut off.

More questions & answers from Amelie

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