amelie

[cimorene]

i couldn't remember if the accent on the e was supposed to be grave or acute. anyway. went and saw amelie, fully expecting it to be a guilty pleasure and overly light and cute. ok, well, there wasn't much dark, but it was self-consciously light and quite witty and funny. eeeeee! just. fabulous. the girl was not much like audrey hepburn, no matter what my beloved rm#1 says. but she was quite pretty and very good and the boy (maybe i'm just insane here) seemed to resemble methos. there were little intrusive bits of not-realness. ie, if nino didn't show up for their date, either he forgot, or he got abducted, etc, eventually ending up the survivor of a terrorist bomb near afghanistan and becoming a goat herder, and she wasn't going to waste any time thinking about a man who wore a hat that looked like a tea-cosy. hahahaha. also the subtitles were quite a nice font.

got back to discover overpowering smell of dill pickles in the hall. i don't know. maybe it's plain dill or plain vinegar. since i can't imagine how the dill pickle smell would get there. well, or when it comes down to it, the other smells either, so what the hell. it's definitely pickles.

my grandpa (bob, natch) sent an article clipped from the miami herald about a contest to design the new florida quarter. deadline april 30, if you're interested (^.^???), here. suggestions for slogans (by artists for the herald) included "home of hurricanes," "fun for the family" (with disney world pictures, of course), and "the spanglish state." mostly, i think it's the cutest thing on earth that he sends me stuff like this. it's not like it's enclosed in a letter, but like he encloses brief little notes with the newspaper clippings he sends. i just picture him reading tons of magazines all the time and checking everything he reads against a mental list of people to see who might be interested. what if there's a conflict? my dad often gets torn-out articles from science, natural history, national geographic, etc with "please send this on to your sister when you're done with it" scrawled across the top. heeee.

Comments

it's an é

[lido-kitty.livejournal.com]

and the boy (maybe i'm just insane here) seemed to resemble methos.

Oh, yes! Yes, yes, and yes! I've been trying to convince people of that for almost a year! Whee, I'm so happy I'm not crazy (or that we are together). ::sigh of relief:: It's the way the nose and the eyes are put together; add to that the thin face with the cheekbones, and it's exactly him.

OTOH, I despair of ever finding anyone who *didn't* thing think it was light, but instead extremely dark and depressing. Bleh.

[hisgreyeyes.livejournal.com]

seemed to resemble methos.

That's who he looked like! I spent the entire movie going 'Who is that? Have we seen him in something else?' to my sister, who tried to smother me halfway through.

Hah! I wasn't quite as insane as I thought!

[kmazzy.livejournal.com]

i love love love audrey tautou's eyes.

but methos is puke and i think they could have got a cuter actor who did NOT look like him to be little amélie's man.

Re: it's an é

[cimness.livejournal.com]

lido, i'm fascinated: how is it dark and depressing?

Re: it's an é

[lido-kitty.livejournal.com]

(Would have answered earlier, but internet provider cut my connection, the bastard)

Hmm, so first, there's the feeling of loneliness. Before the movie, Amélie has literally no-one, and she just, *lives*. Goes through it. And she enjoys things, she enjoys the *little* things. Throwing rocks in the Seine, putting her hands in the bag of grains, etc... This is central to the movie; it's the first thing they show us, and they keep alluding to it through it all. And, to me, it represented just how sad life is, how extremely empty, too. It's not like she has depression, something that can be cured, she just has this almost completely empty life.

So then, you figure she's like this because she's alone, and that the point of the movie will be to show us how relationships will make everything better. But to me, it showed the exact opposite - it's an anti-romantic comedy, if you consider that, in those, being a couple means you're happy because you have Love, The End.

Let's take her relationship with Tino: she doesn't fall in love with him "immediately", she doesn't learn to love him either. It's a person who, like her, is alone (and I'm not saying just romantically, here) and enjoys those little things, too. They get together through nothing but the knowledge that the other exists.

Remember that scene, when she's cooking and she imagines what it would be like if they were together? He buys her some fruit, then gets home and pass his fingers through the - what is that called? instead of the door, see what I mean? - to make some sound/music. Again, little things they enjoy. This comes back at the end, too, but this was clearly visible in this scene.

And when they finally are together, we realize that they and their lives are the same, and what do they enjoy? Little things. This just shows us that nothing changes, that being alone or being together makes no difference, that whatever happens, their only pleasure will come from those little things they always enjoyed. And after showing us how sad and horrible her old life is, well, for me the end was just the conclusion that proved life can't be anything but that. So, yes, dark, because of the continued under-current, and depressing because of the fatality.

(And for the record, I think the same can be proved by the others "couples"/characters, or through Amélie's actions, but it seemed easier to explain with the principal relationship.)

So, did any of this make any sense?