Relationships in Amelie
William Harris, in a response to Amelie, wrote Amelies unity is created through a classic linear continuity editing style, while using some flash-forwards and flashbacks. The editors responsibilities in controlling these conventions of editing become essential for creating the films meaning during post-production and ultimately leading to the films final print and overall success.
Jeunet spends a good twenty minutes of the film on an elaborate and carefully crafted introduction which succeeds in introducing Amelies character as a lonely, misunderstood child deprived of playmates who is constantly looking for imaginary compensations to fill the void in her own life. She is too shy to find love and yet she is satisfied bringing joy into the lives of others in order to forget about her own shortcomings. Every character has a quirk which makes them fit under a type like the jealous ex-boyfriend or the mysterious lover. Because of this type of characterization, use of bright colors, diagetic exaggerated sound elaborate sets, the film seems almost like a contemporary fairytale.
The scene that defines Amelies problem is the scene where shes watching television in her apartment after Raymond Dufayel (played by Serge Merlin), her only friend and guardian makes a comment about Amelie being a lonely child and that she cant relate to other people. Jeunet cleverly projects Amelies interior monologue onto a parody of a French television show about the lives of celebrities, which in turn serves as a flash front. He even got the host, Frederick Mitero, to do the voiceover for the scene.
The digitally saturated colors red, yellow, blue and green, juxtaposed against the black white television feature about Amelies life along with the low-key lighting increases the comic effect of the scene. At the beginning of the scene, the intricate, red wallpaper with an animated-looking painting on it is in focus and as the camera tilts down, Amelie in her red shirt on a red couch come into focus while the background is blurred. Details like the painting re-enforce Amelies fairytale like qualities. The old-school dramatic soundtrack exaggerates the emotion, thus adding an element of comedy to the scene. Jean-Pierre Jeunet is known for his flawless image compositions and he has taken great care to ensure that every shot looks like a colorful canvas. The first shot itself observes the rule of thirds where the frame is divided between the painting by artist Michael Sowa and the wall, while the camera tilts down to reveal the subject (Audrey) slightly off-centre. The lines of the frame in the background, the back of the couch and the corner of the wall all run parallel adding symmetry to the shot. The next shot of the television is a good example of perfect mise-en-scene. The green TV with its small red light is in focus where as in the background, red and green decorative pieces have been placed around the television and you can even see two red objects out of focus through the glass. There is tremendous depth in the shot, even though shallow focus has been used the hard shadows on the right and the extension of the wall add another dimension to the frame and the wall is in soft focus where as the objects beyond the window are completely out of focus. Its shots like these make you respect the director for his precision and attention to detail. The wide shot of Amelie on the couch has a lot of clashing textures colors that contribute to the tacky yet perfectly placed sets used by Jeunet throughout the film. In the DVD commentary, he admits his love for such tacky sets and the pleasure he gets in creating them. Audrey has been given minimum make up to render her character more realistic and approachable. The film in the film has been intentionally given the bad-picture look to make it seem like an old documentary and to further remove it from the films reality. The documentary uses speeded time and discontinuity editing along with many soft focus shots Chiarascuro. The director has once again played on Amelies quirk of skipping stones, making it an important part of her personality throughout the film by showing it as lifes simple pleasures, stresses that fact that small things like these help her get through the day. (Amelie, 2001) The feature shows Amelie as a celebrity first and then as a saint and finally as a nurse. She is first shown as a happy celebrity, pretending to skip stones and heavily made up in a pretty dress, interspersed with shots of people dancing and fireworks.
The comic element comes in when Amelie is shown amongst homeless people then as Mother Theresa, washing the feet of the blind man as a nurse, taking care of Dufayel who is in a wheel chair. The garden where her mother releases the fish is shown again in the black and white film except this time, it is with the grown-up Amelie. . This shot in the garden is particularly interesting because the point of view gives the camera a spy-like quality. This effect is created by taking shits of Amelie through the branches and leaves, making the foreground out of focus and intrusive. There is symmetry in most of the shots of the black and white film like the shot with the cameras in a line the crowd of people wailing to her funeral. Even the TV is centralized and the background and the vertical and horizontally symmetrical shadows forms a frame-within-a-frame for the television. The dialogue, which declares Amelie as the Godmother of outcasts, summarizes what she feels about herself she feels that she will die of loneliness and exhaustion because she is shy which is an undeserved death for someone who has dedicated her life to helping others. She also feels guilty that she has helped so many strangers but has never been able to give her own father a breath of air. Although the feature is meant to be comic, the artificiality of the entire scene serves to heighten Amelies misery even more. The bright colors, the contemporary art interior dcor along with the references to Lady Di in throughout the film locate the film in modern times where as the film has an odd, retro-futuristic which brings out influences of animation and Popular Culture and yet, because Jeunet was so involved in the entire process of making the film, he is more of an auteur than merely a director (Vanderschelden 10). The soundtrack by French composer Yann Tiersen is a masterpiece and sets the mood for the film by using a postproduction technique known as warping, Jeunet strikes a perfect balance between dream-like Surrealism real-world reference points (Lanzoni 371)
The other fabulous scene that proves as an example of how Amelies imagination compensates for her shy personality is the scene where she calls Nino Quincampoix (played by Matthieu Kassovitz), her mystery lover, to the park to return his photo album. Once again, she fails to reveal herself to the man she loves but plays a game to keep him intrigued and to hold on to the mystery because to approach him would be a reality check and being a dreamer, she prefers to remain hidden. The scene opens with pigeons flying across the screen and the diagetic sound of their wings flapping along with the sounds of people in the background music from the carousel sets the mood for a bright, happy day.
At the same time, a woman walks across the frame wearing green and a man walks in the background wearing red. Jeunet was so particular about effects timing that when Nino blinks, they fired a gun to make the pigeons fly in the background simultaneously. Once again, green, blue, red yellow are the dominant colors even the people in the far background in red clothes. The woman who answers the phone is also wearing a maroon that matches the carousel and a light green. Because the scene was shot on location and in a tourist-dominated area, there are a lot of people in the background and the frames had to be prepared to avoid having the extras too close to the camera. The shot of Amelie talking on the phone is a very well composed shot. She is facing the camera slightly off centre to the right in the foreground and in the background is Nino at the phone booth. On the right, in the background, taking up the rest of the frame is the carousel even though Nino is out o focus, you know its him you can see what hes doing. This increases the tension excitement in the shot and stresses the fact that even though she is so close to him, she would rather spy on him and make him run a mile away before she reveals herself from a distance rather than just walk up to him, introduce herself and hand him the album. Later, you can see Nino approaching the phone booth and walking straight past, once again out of focus and the camera cuts the frame to place Amelie in focus, once again following the rule of thirds. The small child running in a circle is wearing pants the same color as the arrows and while running he encircles the arrow, highlighting its importance. In the shot where Nino is climbing up the stairs, the camera movement and the close up of the stairs show up Ninos point of view. When the shot changes and the camera begins to follow him up the stairs, you can see clearly how the colors have been pushed in post-production because the clouds are literally green in color. In the DVD commentary, Jeunet says that it was a difficult day to shoot on because at certain periods, there was bright sunlight at other times it was gray and so they had to do heavy color correction after the scene was shot. When the shot changes to a frontal shot of Nino climbing the stairs, we can see that even the gazebo in the background is green in color. The shot of the pigeons picking the seeds which later reveal an arrow and Ninos smile when he sees it is conveys so much emotion it shows the trouble Amelie went through to amuse herself and Nino it shows Ninos excitement disbelief at whats happening to him right now what to expect, which is why he starts to run up the stairs after seeing the arrow. The heavy shadows on the ground throughout the scene indicate that the scene was shot at noon with the sun overhead.
Unique camera work is displayed in the shot of the statue where the camera circles it from a semi-low angle, tilts own and then rests all in one swift, seamless motion. The sound of the clock in the background is a strong indicator of time since curiosity has been built up so far. Jeunet plays with all kinds of effects and the sound effect he uses for when the statue winks at Nino adds a comical charm to the scene. The soundtrack begins to play once Nino see Amelie put the album into his bike from the telescope and this increases the feeling of excitement when hes running back down the stairs. Jeunet loves to shoot close to the ground and to the feet, which, he admits, is an influence of Orson Welles. Little details make the film more believable and realistic like the shot where Nino has to dodge the two girls playing with a rope before he can get to his bike and the fact that he goes through his book before answering the phone thats jarring in the background. The scene concludes in a beautiful manner with an aerial shot panning across location, which rests to show Nino getting onto his bike and riding off and the soundtrack of the carousel paying in the background. You can even see a blue arrow pointing towards some off-screen space near the photo booth. The camera then tilts down for a close up on Audreys face who looks straight into the lens and gives a beautiful smile just as the soundtrack reaches its climax and the scene is cut.
Consciously breaking away from the French New Wave tradition, Jeunet has used continuity editing along with many special effects to merge the purely visual with Realism. Rene Perdal believes that young French Cinema is turned more towards realism introspection than the visual, and it does not rely on technological prowess or visual effects, but rather on elaborate mise-en-scene (Vanderschelden 14). The film falls under the category of Cinema du Look, which refers to high-tech pop cinema influenced by Hollywood appealing to younger audiences. It shows the French illustration of the post-modern influence exerted on cinema during the 1980s (Vanderschelden 16).
In the film, Jeunet creates an image of Paris far more beautiful and Romantic than it actually is. Shooting on location, he presents to the viewer a fairy-tale version of Montmartre based on collections of his own memories of childhood and personal experience. Each character is identified with a subconscious personality trait even though Amelie is shown to be distant from them all, she understands them perfectly and from her point of view, we break each character down to their primal traits and quirks.
In conclusion, Jeunets bold step has taken French cinema out of the shadow of its New Wave heritage and placed it in the league of mainstream cinema. By doing so, he has developed a new auteur system within the American popular culture trend which reduces the gap between and brings together artistic commercial films which are aimed, not only at the intelligencia but at all cinema-lovers. The familiar setting the use of realistic characters facing real problems extend the appeal of the film mainly to a younger generation, amongst others.
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