Film Studies II - The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain

The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain is a French romantic comedy film directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet in year 2001. The story setting take place in Montmartre, Paris, which is primarily known for its artistic history. The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain was a co- production between France and Germany companies.This film is the highest-grossing French-language film when released in United States, and it s also one of the successful French movie in worldwide.

The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain begin with young little innocent Amélie Poulain, her eccentric parents mistaken her having heart defect and decided to home school her, having this lonely childhood make her develop a mischievous personality and whimsical imagination. Her mother was killed by a suicidal tourist when she was six, this lead her father who withdrawal from society become worsen. At the age of 18, Amélie leaves home and work as a waitress at Café des 2 Moulins in Montmartre, where she met a bunch of eccentric. Amélie accidentally drop a perfume stopper and discover an old metal box of memorable childhood item hidden by a boy who live in the her apartment before decades, she try her best to track down the owner of the metal box to return it to him, and she promises herself secretly to devote herself and bring happiness to people if that makes the owner happy. She asks the apartment's concierge, Madeleine Wallace and some old tenants to reveal the owner's identity. Finally, she discover the owner identity, Dominique Breatodeau after meet her reclusive neighbour, Raymond Dufayel, an artist with brittle bone disease. Breatodeau decide to make peace with her alienate daughter and grandson he never see after see the metal box.

At some days, Amélie was attracted with a guy, Nino Quincampoix who collect discarded photograph of stranger from the passport photo booth. Amélie bump into Nino again and fall in love with him secretly. Amélie uses Nino photo album as a key and played cat-and-mouse game with him to revealed her true identity and finally have a happy relationship with Nino at the end.


In my perspective, Amélie is a very mysterious yet interesting person, you cannot predict what she action she will take in the next second, the director shows her expression with close up shot before she start taking action on her plan.

Amélie's quote in the film

Other than that, the director Jean also uses quite a lot symmetry in the film.

 Montmarthe Paris

Amélie at Café des 2 Moulins

Amélie's mother

The film is also shown the character's perspective using OTS (over the shoulder shot)

The lighting in the film are very unique compare to other film, it looks only like using natural light but more dim to contrast the color of the color and the background, making the audience will focus to a certain color and object.

Jean also loves to show first person viewpoint in the film, this technique bring in audience into the character and let audience feel how the character see the world and other character looks like.

The protagonists, Amélie has rich exaggerated expression that will make audience curious or laugh.

In conclusion, The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain plays a lot with the camera technique and make the film have more depth and more interesting. Audience will be surprise with Amélie's mindset and action which unique than normal people.