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themp
Citizen
Username: Themp
Post Number: 548
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 25, 2004 - 10:56 pm: |     |
Amelie is a film about a group of extremely innocent art students or something who live in Paris. Even the bullying, mentally ill, paranoid ex-boyfriend of a cafe worker, who hangs around all day watching her and making tape recorded notes on her activities, is cute and harmless. The cafe itself has no other customers but a failed writer who is not at all bitter about his failure, yet the waitresses live in fabulously appointed apartments with rich satin quilts, jewel-box wallpaper, and 1940's reproduction appliances. Even the gruff, cruel vegetable vendor at the local market decorates in queer eye 1940's preciousness. The French economy must be red hot!
After a while one begins to suspect that the innocence may in fact be the advanced type of pseudo-artlessness affected by trucker hat wearers in Brooklyn - part of the pose of the dumb artist. Innocence can be a screen for hiding self-involvement and vanity, as in Michael Stipe circa 1991. Suddenly it all locks in halfway through the movie - every character must be working on an MFA thesis project, a truth so obvious the director would no more mention it than mention that the story takes place on Earth. We never see the seminars and group crits, but we can smell them just off stage. Maybe the Sorbonne?
For instance there's this Gap model type guy who collects torn pictures from under the filthy photo booths in subway stations and glues them into volumes. He pretends to be naive and backwards, but his good looks and fashionable clothing make it a little hard to buy. Why does he have this "obsession"? And why does he split his work week between a porno emporium and a funhouse? If you've spent any time around art students, then you know that the world of commercialized sexuality is catnip to the worst among them, who would love to win a painting prize while working in a porno theater, preferably on the night shift and with a mop. The number of female artists who "stripped for a while" or were dominatrixes is numbing. The pretentious usefulness of working in a funhouse I won't even go into.
As for his picture books, you can imagine for yourself the terminal-affirmative presentation? About fragmentary images? and a bunch of other crap? or whatever. No wonder he wants to get his lost book back so badly - he needs it to get a teaching fellowship.
There is also an older pop artist who is still working in the dated vein of series. He repeatedly paints "The Boating Party" and has perfected a deadpan, Warholian art-appreciation talk about this absurd painting. His life is dedicated to high camp. The painting is a favorite of old ladies who think the French lived wonderfully at the turn of the last century. Though clearly a man of means who employs a decorator and has a young "studio assistant" living with him in the person of a semi-illiterate Greek boy, this character is aware that his own work can't engage Amelie and her restless friends who must take there rebellion off the walls, and out into the streets to create something new.
Amelie herself is destined to be a non-artist from the first scene. Although beautiful and sensitive, she is cold and aloof, and almost paralyzed by vanity and a boring-to-anyone-but-her obsession with her childhood (so common in MFA programs). She has no friends at all, save people of inferior social class and appearance whom she patronizes by interfering in their lives. Does she ever invite them home for dinner? Nope. We get the sense that she may already have left art school, and is working on developing the taste and persona to make herself into an important personage, perhaps as a gallery owner. She does toy with some nonsense about a garden gnome, but it is a bit lifted straight from "the Full Monty" about stealing an uptight person's gnome in order to loosen them up. We are meant to see it as a failure, as is her dabbling in video. Amelie's immense wealth finds expression in beautiful lingerie, and an ultra-tasteful collection of objects that partake of that rarified world of outsider art, as well as sumptuously colored silk wall coverings, and works by up and coming young painters hung with affected casualness on every wall (bet they're insured carefully).
She sets out to acquire the Gap-ad artist for her stable. It is a coy dance between them in which the narcissistic fantasy of not having ambition must be maintained with formal gravity by both dancers - rather like a tango. In this game he isn't an artist, and she isn't a powerful agent/gallery owner, so they must negotiate in semaphore. The tension spills over into erotic cat and mouse games, and tellingly, when she finally takes the old painter's advice to pursue the young artist aggressively, she ends up bedding him like Madonna would bed a poolboy - without words, and without letting his speak. We suspect he will regret mixing business with pleasure when the next hot thing come along. In an earlier flashback we see her laughing at another suitor's passion. Her cutesy-pie mugging - all Charlie Chaplin eye rolls, is meant to erode our trust in her and make her loathsome and it works (although a nude scene wouldn't have killed me).
Stylistically, the movie uses the emotional propaganda of a Hallmark ad, with some comic low-jinx mixed in. The camera often starts a scene halfway down the hall, then moves in fast on some charming person to end in ultra close up, with a roaring noise like your head is out a car window making the point that the camera has moved. Of course the camera can't move that fast. The move is speeded up in editing and the noise is added. The noise is a kind of joke for editors. It is called the "Malcolm in the Middle" zoom in film schools (or should be), especially if the subject is a kid who is supposed to look nervous. Another handy shortcut in evidence here is to use a fisheye lens when someone is supposed to look nervous (aka the "Hot for Teacher" shot). The first eighty or two hundred minutes of Amelie are accomplished using this technique along with "zoom zoom zoom" Nissan ad techniques, plus cute kids wearing goggles or hats or whatever in closeup as seen in various other ads for summer-being-too-short or don't-your-kids-deserve-insurance or whatever.
There is also a tedious actualization of everything mentioned in abrupt edits - for instance all the different people having orgasms in Paris at one particular second, which you know you will have to see as soon as the issue comes up. .8 seconds are devoted to each couple. This is the director pushing your nose in it to show you who's boss. He also likes to put extraneous text and arrows on the screen, in the style of postcards of hotels with "this was our window" written on them with an arrow to a window. I think this is supposed to put you at ease by making a highly organized piece of propaganda seem incompetent.
There are many jump cuts often accomplished with white flashes where the camera will gain a few inches on its subject, or will gain nothing, but during the jump cut the subject can shift their eyes from one side to the other or adjust to a new, more precious expression. This is another advertising strategy used to simulate the "transparency" of home movies.
All of this combines to make Amelie the worst movie I have seen. When the DVD stopped spinning in the stone silent room, I switched on a movie about giant mosquitoes (Skeeter) on SciFi, and my wife and I watched with hungry gratitude.
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Cutter
Citizen
Username: Cutter
Post Number: 310
Registered: 11-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, February 26, 2004 - 8:10 am: | |
Maybe you needed to see it in a real theater.
I was charmed from start to finish. |
Dave
Citizen
Username: Dave
Post Number: 6465
Registered: 4-1998
| | Posted on Thursday, February 26, 2004 - 8:23 am: | |
I thought the whole point was the movie was basically her POV (a dreamworld). Heck, it's not supposed to be deep; it's a romantic comedy. But what do I know? I enjoyed reading this review, too.
and the Zoom Zoom ads are Mazda's, not Nissan's |
sullymw
Citizen
Username: Sullymw
Post Number: 225
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, February 26, 2004 - 9:13 am: | |
The movie was cute, but Audrey Tatou!!! |
Ukealalio
Citizen
Username: Ukealalio
Post Number: 484
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, February 26, 2004 - 9:58 am: | |
I'm with you on Audrey Tatou. Hope my wife doesn't read this post. |
themp
Citizen
Username: Themp
Post Number: 550
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, February 26, 2004 - 10:19 am: | |
Everyone I know loved it. Now I think they are all scientologists or something.
If I want a European movie about a childlike, dreamy woman looking for love, I would rent 1954's "La Strada" with Anthony Quinn and Guiliieta Massina. The comparison is instructive. No damn intrusive all-knowing camera showing you crap all the time, and something like economic realism throughout.
But it aint no comedy, that's for sure.
If I want romantic comedy about an impractical woman looking for love, "Bringing Up Baby" is still top of its class.
I never found Amelie funny. It was crude and lame when she started playing pranks on people.
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themp
Citizen
Username: Themp
Post Number: 551
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, February 26, 2004 - 10:29 am: | |
Note- I was a guard at the Phillips Collection in DC, and I used to stand in front of "the Boating Party" for hours, preventing people from getting too close.
I leaned to love Alfred Sisley at this time and I still do.
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Ukealalio
Citizen
Username: Ukealalio
Post Number: 486
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, February 26, 2004 - 10:32 am: | |
I liked the movie, it was light stuff but it looked beautiful (not just Audrey Tatou). I could enjoy this without any dialogue, it was eye candy. |
themp
Citizen
Username: Themp
Post Number: 552
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, February 26, 2004 - 10:37 am: | |
By the way, I was overstating my criticism for comic effect. |
drewdix
Citizen
Username: Drewdix
Post Number: 493
Registered: 7-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, February 26, 2004 - 10:59 am: | |
Darn I hoping this was a serious critique- as such it's far more pretentious and esoteric than the movie ever was. But fun to read, as it is thoughtful opinion.
Kinda missed the boat on the comic effect part- if you really meant that (?)
I liked the movie; the editing, as craft, was nothing short of breathtaking and very difficult to achieve. You may not have liked the context, but technically it was superb.
Fun thread to start Themp. |
themp
Citizen
Username: Themp
Post Number: 556
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, February 26, 2004 - 11:21 am: | |
I didn't like the movie at all, but I kind of hammed it up a little because I know everyone else liked it. Liking this movie is not totally invalid. It irritated me for some reason and I was trying to figure out why by writing it out. I wanted to start a discussion. |
Hank Zona
Citizen
Username: Hankzona
Post Number: 975
Registered: 3-2002
| | Posted on Thursday, February 26, 2004 - 11:36 am: | |
I remember seeing the movie when I was in need of some good light entertainment...and it was very satisfying in that regard. I smiled throughout (and laughed at some points during the movie) and smiled for a good while afterward. Audrey Tatou and her character were both very appealing (and she was really good in a totally different role last year in "Dirty, Pretty Things"). And I remember going into the theatre having high expectations of it being good, and having those expectations being met...the best of possible combinations. It does suck if you have high expectations and come nowhere near them with movies, plays, concerts, etc. |
Earlster
Citizen
Username: Earlster
Post Number: 125
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - 12:07 pm: | |
My wife and I saw Amelie in Montclair just after it came out (more then 2 years ago). We had never heard of it when we chose to see it, but we liked it so much, we are still talking about it once in a while. |
harpo
Citizen
Username: Harpo
Post Number: 1318
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Friday, March 5, 2004 - 5:45 pm: | |
I'm with you, hemp. I found the movie quite annoying. |
J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 949
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Friday, March 5, 2004 - 10:57 pm: | |
Funny, Themp, I too just finally got around to looking at Amelie. I resisted for a long time, fearing it would amount to little more than sentimental treacle (I'd seen some trailers). Then somebody I like insisted it was good, so I gave in.
Extremely low expectations contributed to my enjoying it more than I thought I would. Plus, the fact that I fell asleep for the middle portion of the film helped the plot seem more mysterious, at least until I rewound the tape and looked at the missing bits the following day.
It seemed to me rather like a French movie made for Americans. It was as if there were a mime in the background of every shot semaphoring "Do you see how quintessentially French this is? Do you see? Are you enchanted yet?"
After a while I started thinking that if I were French, this movie would probably look about as clever and unpredictable as a late night re-run of "Cheers" looks to your average American. |
J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 950
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Friday, March 5, 2004 - 11:19 pm: | |
"It irritated me for some reason and I was trying to figure out why by writing it out."
For me it was the annoying moralistic edge, first on the part of the main character (she dispenses justice along with salvation, what a saint) and then on the part of the filmmaker who, naturally, must spell out for us (via the old artist shut-in, who would love to be able to live life first-hand) that Amelie is a presumptuous control freak who never encounters life directly herself but feels entitled to meddle in others' business; and aren't we viewers a little ashamed for having enjoyed her meddling? Aren't we also too fearful and repressed? (Well, no.)
I found this subtext tedious and preachy, in its stereotypical way. The cutesy-artsy aspect was actually a little less irritating than I'd anticipated. |
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