Jean-Pierre Jeunet doesn’t know what number of occasions he’s seen Le Fabuleux Destin D’Amélie Poulain — or simply Amélie, as his most beloved movie to this point is understood. Nevertheless, he does keep in mind the latest event — in July 2021, at a particular free screening on the seashore, organized by the Cannes Movie Pageant. “An enormous display on the seashore without cost,” he remembers. “And it was a wet day. And so they warned me, most likely we may have 50 individuals, no extra… It was packed. They refused 200 individuals. And all people [had seen] the movie earlier than. It wasn’t new for them.”
Watching Amélie on a wet seashore is precisely the kind of unconventionally stunning second Jeunet’s titular heroine, performed by Audrey Tautou, would recognize. The 2001 movie, which will likely be re-released in theaters starting Wednesday, February 14th, is a contemporary fairy story a couple of lonely younger lady cautious of different individuals — till a sequence of occasions attracts her out into the world, the place she finds a brand new degree of reference to these round her.
That 2021 Amélie screening additionally had a deeper significance for Jeunet, as a result of in 2001, the movie was submitted to the Cannes competition and was subsequently rejected. “I keep in mind the screening the place the boss of the Cannes Movie Pageant watched the movie within the theater — I noticed the bald head of the boss shining within the mild of the projector,” Jeunet says, including that he knew, simply from watching Gilles Jacob (president of the Cannes Movie Pageant from 2001-2014) watch the film, that Jacob didn’t just like the movie.
Nevertheless, he provides, being rejected by Cannes truly labored to the movie’s benefit, “as a result of it was such a giant controversy in France, it was massive promoting for us.” That preliminary notoriety was karmically redeemed by the movie’s worldwide success, incomes nearly $175 million on the field workplace and receiving 5 Oscar nominations, together with unique screenplay and international language movie (because the Worldwide Movie class was recognized at that time).
That early success has translated into a movie which holds up remarkably properly 23 years later. Maybe that’s due, partially, to the movie’s existence exterior of area and time: “It’s slightly bit timeless, the look of Amélie. It’s classic, and someday it’s fashionable,” Jeunet says. “You may have a TV display, however in a sq. body. It’s the identical factor once you see Blade Runner — it’s very fashionable science fiction, however once you see the screens, they’re all quaint.”
Amélie can also be set in a fairytale model of Paris that Jeunet freely describes as “pretend,” as a result of if nothing else, “at the moment, so many canines would shit on the road. You couldn’t stroll on the sidewalk. Now it’s getting higher. It’s slightly bit cleaner. The town is worse now due to so many building websites and site visitors jams, but it surely’s cleaner in time period of canine shit.”
