Amélie (2001) on Netflix
Amélie Poulain, a shy waitress in Montmartre, finds a metal box of a boy's childhood keepsakes hidden behind a tile in her apartment. She sets out to find him.
- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb8.2/10847,295 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
Born in 1974 and raised by eccentric parents who wrongly believed her heart was weak, Amélie Poulain is schooled at home and left to her imagination. Her mother Amandine dies in an accident, and her father Raphaël withdraws further. At eighteen she leaves for Montmartre and waits tables at the Café des 2 Moulins, single and content with small pleasures. One day she drops a perfume stopper that loosens a wall tile and uncovers a metal box of childhood keepsakes left by a boy who lived in the apartment decades earlier. She decides to find him and hand it back, and vows that if the return pleases him, she will spend her life helping others.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Amélie (2001)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Jean-Pierre Jeunet originally wrote the role of Amélie for English actress Emily Watson, with Amélie's father an Englishman living in London, but Watson's French was not strong and she was tied up filming Gosford Park. Jeunet then rewrote the screenplay for a French actress, and Audrey Tautou was the first he auditioned, after seeing her on the poster for Venus Beauty Institute (1999).
SPOILER
The accidental death of Amélie's mother was inspired by a real event: in 1983 a Canadian tourist was killed at Notre-Dame de Paris when a French woman jumping from the cathedral landed on her. The film reversed the nationalities of those involved.- A species of glass frog was named Cochranella amelie after the film's heroine. The scientist who named it credited the movie's celebration of little details and the role glass frogs and other amphibians play in the health of the planet.
- Cannes Film Festival selector Gilles Jacob called Amélie "uninteresting" after seeing an early cut without music, so the film was not shown at the festival. Its absence caused a controversy because the French media and audiences had welcomed it warmly.
- The chairs at the Café des 2 Moulins, the real Paris café where Amélie works in the film, were frequently stolen by fans after the movie came out.
- The word "NORD" on the Gare du Nord facade was digitally altered to "EST" so the building would match narrator André Dussollier's line about Amélie arriving at the Gare de l'Est photo booth.
- Jeunet considered actor Jacques Thébault, the former French voice of Steve McQueen, as the film's narrator, but Thébault's voice had aged too much, so Jeunet chose André Dussollier instead.
