‘Amélie’: A Complementary Journey
“Without you, today’s emotion would be the scurf of yesterday’s.”
[Note: I wrote this piece back in July 2018, right after watching the film for the very first time. I am now revisiting it, hoping to finish and publish what I wrote. Unfortunately, I’ve completely forgotten what my initial goal to write this, was. I’m guessing maybe it’s somewhere along the lines of how the red and green tones that dominated the film both contradict and complement each other and brings a different life to the story… but it may be something else entirely. So, here I publish the draft that I haven’t finished, without changing a single word of it. May this be an unfinished thought that would find its meaning back to me, eventually, in time.]
“On September 3rd 1973, at 6:28pm and 32 seconds, a bluebottle fly capable of 14,670 wing beats a minute landed on Rue St Vincent, Montmartre.” is definitely a memorable intro.
Categorized as a romantic comedy, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie sets a different meaning to the genre. The story about the titular twenty-year-old-something waitress in Paris, portrayed by the magnetic Audrey Tautou, is rather imaginative, like the character herself. Amélie Poulain had a distinctive childhood — one that’s defined by the emotional distance from her parents and lack of friends (human ones), but compensated by the ever-flowing imagination that has lasted her until adulthood. Fast forward to the 90’s, Amélie now works as a waitress at a small and quaint cafe in Montmartre. Here, we are introduced to a whole string of characters, from the staff to the regular customers, via the film’s way of informing us of each of their likes and dislikes.
Thus, begins the story surrounding Amélie’s newfound enjoyment in “meddling” with people’s lives. Though a few of her acts of “kindness” did bring out positive outcomes, other times it did not. On the other side of the story, we focus on Amélie’s own life. Particularly, we see her fall in love but is afraid of pursuing it, we see her befriend a neighbor, skip stones to calm herself down, and imagine alternative lives.
We get to see all of this unfold in front of the backdrop of nostalgic 90’s Paris mostly cascaded with complementary, yet completely opposite, red and green tones. Red is mostly used for Amélie’s wardrobe, and green for the setting, though the two eventually become interchangeable. Red is a color that mostly resembles love, passion, and attention. Its means is to bring focus to whatever person or object or place with that color, and what better way to top it off than to pair it with green. Green is the exact 180º opposite point from red. So, arranging the mise en scene by placing the green setting surrounding a red figure, viewers will become more attracted to the latter.
To be continued?
