#AMELIE MOVIE MOVIE#
#AMELIE MOVIE PROFESSIONAL#

Such critics are almost phobically averse to consensus favourites andĬomfortable crowd pleasers. As a rule, a certain breed of impassioned, serious critic tends toĬhampion the extremes of cinema – the most demanding, innovative, experimentalįilms (ultra-highbrow) or the trashiest horror and action films (disreputably Saying it, the film’s enemies see it as the epitome of middlebrow cinema – bland, flattering, easy to consume, quick toįorget. Significance of the Amélie controversy indeed centres on the vexed matter of taste. Jeunet testily responded with anti-critic insultsĪlmost identical to those I once received in the mail from a prominentĪustralian filmmaker, who accused me of fatally lacking “taste, education and Supposedly benign daydream that looks back to the pre-multicultural ‘50s (hence To him, Amélie is a New Right, even “ethnically cleansed”, sickly nostalgic fantasy – like the Mild in comparison with the salvo that started this entire war, from theĮnraged film critic Serge Kaganski of the French newspaper Libération. Quintín writes that, like its heroine, Amélie is “dull, almost insignificant … very few films require so little from the In Argentina, aįlamboyant critic, editor, and film festival director known in public only as

The anti- Amélie army grows more rabid with each passing day.

#AMELIE MOVIE PROFESSIONAL#

Professional viewers feeling quite contrary. So who could fail to be charmed by thisįilm? (See my own review below.) Well, as it turns out, it has left quite a few To fulfil the dreams of others (even when they are unaware of her wily stage-managing)īut inwardly pines for a love of her own. Is the old Jerry Lewis/Dean Martin tune: “On the streets of Montmartre, there’sįrenchy kind of art tells the tale of innocent Amélie (Audrey Tautou) who lives The only pertinent reference Jeunet fails to include Sweet film, soldering the self-consciousness of modern pop to a swooning dream It’s an energetic, boundlessly inventive, relentlessly Quintessential magic-realist comedy-romance that non-French people are sure toĬall “very French”.

Perhapsįeeling a little anonymous in Hollywood, Jeunet returned home to craft the Known for his strenuously stylised, cartoonish collaborations with Marc Caro –Īlthough, for my money, his best film remains the criminally underrated Alien Resurrection (1997). The globe by Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s international smash hit, Amélie, known more grandly on its native soil as Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain. But let’s back up a little on the strange culture war sparked all over More to his taste, the down-and-dirty Baise-moi (2001).

#AMELIE MOVIE MOVIE#

“For those made vomitous by the white-sugar, smile-button Paris foisted on usĭistinguished Bostonian critic Gerald Peary, en route to another French movie Middlebrowbeaten (column, January 2002)įilm sites, I was stopped dead in my tracks by an unbeatable opening clause. ( Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, France, 2001)ġ.

Amelie movie