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"Sans toi, les émotions d'aujourd'hui ne seraient que la peau morte des émotions d'autrefois."

 

Amélie
I managed to catch Jean-Pierre Jeunet's other movie, A Very Long Engagement, on TV the other day and I absolutely loved it. By then, already Amélie was already on my rental list and I was waiting for the day to come when it would show up in my mailbox. It did not take long. Roughly just about a few days. Good words have been put for this movie for sometime already, so I decided to check it out.

It is unique. Definitely non-cliche. Jeunet seems to pick up quirky and unusual characteristics for his characters. Although quite similar sometimes, from movie to movie, but it is out of this world and untackled. Just seems to make the characters more human. He took time out for the narrator to depict every character's seemingly unusual behaviours and attitudes, letting us understand them a little bit more and in hope that somewhere out there, he gets to connect the characters with an audience watching.

It is heartwarming, how Amélie Poulain (by Audrey Tautou) disregarded the bigger issues around the world and took the littlest of things to make the day of the people around her. She found a box of childhood goodies hidden behind a tile wall on the bathroom floor - right after she saw the news regarding Princess Diana's accident on TV - and decided to hunt down the owner to return it to him. She stole her father's precious gnome and have it go around the world and snapping pictures and sent back to her father. All this, just to get her father to finally pack his bags and travel the world like he had wanted to when his wife was still alive but could not because of a self-diagnosed (and wrong) heart defect on Amélie. She found her childhood sweetheart's photo album of lomo shots from the instant photo booths and decided to solve the mystery of a man whose ripped pictures kept on showing up with the same facial expression - firm and dull. Et cetera. Et cetera.

 

Little Children
I would not say this is one of the best films I have come across. I would not say it is spectacular, as the movie is kind of all over the place and clunky. Because it tackles different characters and jumps around, it is hard to say what is the main plotline. The film started off depicting the return of a pedophile (by Jackie Earle Haley) to a small neighbourhood and how the neighbours are outraged, the character did not show up until probably 30 minutes well into the show. Rest of the time, we are dwelling on Sarah Pierce (by Kate Winslet) and the chatty and annoying housewives at the playground with their children, and her adultery with Brad Adamson (by Patrick Wilson) a.k.a "The Prom King", husband to a successful wife and a man who cannot seem to pass his bar exam because his heart is not in it anymore.

But. I will give credit to Todd Field for picking up unconventional roles for the main characters. He tackles characters we do not usually see in movies - a pedophile and married couples committing adultery. It is like telling the world that good people are constantly battling the urge to do evil. And that behind every wrong move they make, there is a story and a darn good reason for it. So maybe his execution is not as clean cut as Jeunet's, but he did come out making a different movie. And I guess, that is one of the reasons why his movie works.

 

Life is Beautiful (La Vita è bella)
This movie is definitely a breath of fresh air for me. A story about Guido Orefice (by Roberto Benigni), a man with an awesome level of optimism at the worst possible time. His life is a show to him, and he constantly plays a role of a comedian to woo Dora (by Nicoletta Braschi) to become his wife. Even after he was recruited to a restricted camp for Jews with his son Giosué (by Giorgio Cantarini), he refused to let his son in on what the camp was really all about, and convinced him that the camp was merely a competition to win a real life battle tank.

I find the movie very adorable. Bittersweetly romantic at times. How Dora, even though not a Jew, decided to hop on the train and become one of the secluded Jews just to be at the same place as her husband and son. How Guido, even at times when chances seem slim to escape alive, he managed to put on a smile for his son and still think of his wife on the other side of the camp, airing out the opera music they first met in the gramophone and exclaiming "Good morning, Princess!" - his first and ever wooing line to her - through the sound system, just to keep his wife's spirits up and remain hopeful.

Movie rental: QuickFlix