And here we are for Round 3! This one will only last about a week. It's getting down to it! IMPORTANT NOTE: While I appreciate votes, I don't appreciate cheating. I check votes quite often, and I do see things that statistically don't make sense (Example 1: Person #1 is at a 70% loss and a few hours before the end of the battle, there's suddenly 15 votes for that person in 5 minutes to bring them 1 vote ahead, but then 1-2 people vote for Person #2 and less than a minute later Person #1 gets 1-2 more votes to tie or bring back into a lead... this goes on for an hour like some eBay sniper bidding; Example 2: A battle has a crazy high amount of votes and the rest of the battles have barely a third that many... where'd all those people go?; I could keep giving examples of things I've seen, but you get the idea). So please, for the rest of this tournament, please try to win on the level. You're not proving anything to yourself if you're cheating to win. This tournament is anonymous for a reason--so you can win on the merits of your writing, not based on who you know (or any possible loophole in the poll system you found). Thank you.
All of that being said, let's get on into the first battle of Round 3! First up we have Macaulay Connor, who has made it this far with his reviews of Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. Facing off against him is Your Accomplice in the Wood Chipper, who made it this far with North by Northwest and Yojimbo. Now they're both checking out the quirky French Rom-Com, Amelie. Read, vote (fairly), comment, enjoy! You have until Friday. Below is the updated bracket. Click to make it bigger.
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Review #1
By Macaulay Connor
Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain, 2001
Cinema and literature are two separate artistic forms, and yet similar conventions emerge in the way the two are considered. For example, like rules passed down from literary theorists for fiction, great cinema is often considered to come from a place of serious drama. It has been, in part, through this de facto (fallacious) correlation between good cinema and serious cinema that terms such as “feel good” and “romance” and even “comedy” have come to take on connotations which suggest negative things. Real art is harrowing, makes us think and then devastates us. Or, so we’re taught. And, although, the essentiality of perception will demand that one adjudges for oneself whether or not Amélie is good art it is impossible to deny that it aims to be feel-good art. The eponymous, sprite-like heroine devotes much of her time to precipitating moments of good fortune on unsuspecting folks – helping them to find a smidgen of joie-de-vivre in their lives. And the film unfolds with the same philanthropic desire to fill the audience with cheer. For with every buoyant frame overflowing with ornate attention to detail in its mise-en-scène, it is clear that Jean-Pierre Jeunet – in his fourth feature film – is significantly intent on making the audience feel good.
The elfin Amélie is born to two equally unusual, neurotic parents. Her father touches her but once a year for an annual check-up. The little girl, who grows so emotional at the rare bit of attention paid to her, has heart palpitations when he does so leading to an inaccurate diagnosis of a heart tremor. Her (erroneous) heart tremor leads to her being homeschooled by an equally odd mother. Her entire childhood is plagued by such manifestations of their idiosyncrasies and over time the eccentricities tell on her so much, she retreats to her imagination for solace becoming an atypical creature full of whimsy and almost unearthly in her sanguinity. The mechanics of Amélie’s childhood are telegraphed in a brief, albeit effective, prologue which marks the entirety of the film to come – full of charming whimsy and intent on being as illusorily joyful, even in the face of a parent’s death. Amélie’s otherworldliness follows her into adulthood and one evening a seemingly innocuous misplacement of a perfume cap leads to the discovery of a child’s tin box from forty years before in her apartment. Amélie is determined to find the owner, intent on bringing at least a sliver of joy to his life. And with that one moment of kindness proving to be a success she devotes her days to bringing happiness to others.
The improbability of precipitating happiness consistently throughout the lives of others is stark. And Amélie’s ability to make good on her quest of fostering happiness is marked by significant fantastical elements as if to overemphasise the pronounced sense of magic which comes with Amélie’s quest – and its success. A director more intent on the melancholy would undoubtedly have placed greater prominence on the sadness which lies beneath but the way Jeunet crafts Amélie underscores his focus on jubilation. This saturated jubilation evident in each frame could become a potential caveat in pronouncing the film as something of style over substance. But if it IS style over substance, golly, what style! To call it a sensory overload may suggest an overly ornate spectacle and although the sumptuousness of the mise-en-scène is much, much more than one would anticipate it never becomes too much for us to bear. In that way Amélie bears similarity to that “Spectacular! Spectacular!” sequence from Moulin Rouge (incidentally, another lavish, delectable bon-bon from 2001) where Zidler and company vow to put on a show designed to appeal to our senses as much as possible.
The overload of senses is not a ploy to deceive by (for example) hiding the thinness of the story. The overzealousness of this visual banquet is deliberately meant to charm us and win us over. And, it does. Even as the film slyly meanders through incidences of true potential gloom (parent death, loneliness, loss loves, jealousy, fear of despair) Jeunet never stops to wallow in it. The joyful freneticism urges – no, demands – that we surrender to the opulence rather than be bogged down by moments of the narrative itself. Sometimes, it becomes much too easy to forget that cinema is a visual medium meant to enchant – foremost – through the eyes. Jeunet gamely tries to ensure that the feast of colour, editing, music sustains itself and it is not a discredit to the film’s style, Jeunet’s intent or the film itself that it falters (but, barely) as it nears the finish line
Have I buried the film’s narrative lead? Perhaps. For amidst all the good deeds at work Amélie ultimately becomes (or hopes to become) an exercise in romantic comedy – a phrase that has injudiciously, and unfortunately, become something of pejorative. Romantic comedy when done well is excellent (Annie Hall, The Apartment, The Philadelphia Story). And there is little, if anything, inherently dubious about the subgenre. Why Amélie falters in relation in relation to its romantic ideals is that Jeunet insincerely seems to believe that romance is somewhere near the crux of what makes the film click for the audience. With countless beauteous images, Audrey Tatou’s beguiling features, creative set-ups in frame after frame the audience is so busy being thrilled by the journey this fabulous woman is on it’s difficult to become truly invested in the resolution of the essential romance. And, it does not help that said resolution seems to drag out for just two minutes too long.
And yet, even that, is hardly enough to leave the faintest trace of bitter in your mouth. Such a misstep could become especially fateful in another film. Such a precious plot of a do-gooder heroine could be nauseating with another director. And, in that way, Amélie defies logical review conceits. Why does it, still, seem to emerge like a perfectly sweet bar of chocolate when the same ingredients would seem bound to make something less delectable elsewhere? I could speculate that it is Tatou’s winsome turn as the central figure. Or perhaps the singularity of the screenplay. Or, perhaps, the exuberance of Jeunet becomes irresistible just because of how passionate he seems to be with his story. The single reason evades me, but the conclusion is constant. Amélie becomes an engaging confluence of style, whimsy, charm and heart irresistible not so much for where it ends but continuously striking for the stylish road it takes to get there.
They say comedy loses its panache if one ruminates on it too long and over-thinking on the structure might reveal the darker aspects Jeunet seems intent on trying to eschew. But, even that undertone of sadness can be explained away because without sadness there is no need to feel-good and Amélie (the persona and the film) thrills because it takes things which could potentially be rooted in melancholy and transfers it into a convergence of happiness, joy and style. And, oh, what style!
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Review #2
By Your Accomplice In The Wood Chipper
In 1997, after having made two successful, distinctly stylised French films with his co-director Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet popped over to Hollywood to make Alien: Resurrection, a film widely regarded as one of the worst sequels ever to appear on the big screen. You’d have to go a long way to find someone who liked it, and I’d suggest you don’t start with me. Upon returning to his home town of Paris, Jeunet found himself seeing the once-familiar city with fresh eyes, and set out to make a film that would reflect the magic and beauty he had rediscovered. That film is Amélie.
Telling the story of Amélie Poulain (Audrey Tautou), a girl with an overactive imagination but an undernourished heart who develops a taste for bringing happiness into the lives of the people around her, this is a delightful, light-hearted chocolate-box fantasy romance that only occasionally threatens to choke you on its saccharine sweetness.Amélie herself is a wonderful creation, despite her less-than-wonderful upbringing. She was raised by a military physician father (Rufus) and schoolmistress mother (Lorella Cravotta). Her only physical contact with another life form was the annual check-up provided by her father. Such unaccustomed moments of intimacy caused her heart to beat faster, which her Dad diagnosed as being a heart defect, so kept his daughter at home, away from the other children. This, along with a suicidal goldfish and a childhood tragedy, gave Amélie a unique perspective on life that she would carry on into adulthood, where she works as a waitress in a corner cafe in Montmartre alongside its rogues’ gallery of eccentric staff and clientele.
A chance reaction to the death of Princess Diana leads Amélie to discover a treasure trove left by her apartment’s previous inhabitants, so she sets about planning to return the childhood trinkets. She revels in the feeling of harmony she gets from helping others, be they strangers or regular players within her life – though she isn’t close enough to anyone to really call them a friend. Along the way she crosses paths with Nino Quincampoix (Mattieu Kassovitz, director of the seminal La Haine), and finds herself falling in love with this fellow outcast who skips in time to her own offbeat pace, yet her life so far - devoid of affection, interaction and intimacy - ensures that theirs will not be the smoothest of romantic relationships.
From the opening credits - featuring a young Amélie (Flora Guiet) engaging in a variety of nostalgia-inducing childhood antics including peeling dried glue from her fingers and making her hand into a puppet - it is clear this film is a genuine heart-warmer, yet imbued with a tinge of sadness. For all of Amélie’s boundless levels of enjoyment, you can’t help but notice that as a child she was always alone. The film delights in making the ordinary extraordinary, for example by looking at the events occurring simultaneously with Amélie’s birth – a fly being run over, two wine glasses dancing on a wind-buoying tablecloth, a man erasing his deceased friend’s name from his phonebook. Alone, these individual events are almost mundane, but together they contain every aspect of life, from the tender to the tragic.
Though it was released six years before the term was coined, this film displays a unique perspective on the manic pixie dream girl mythology, as we see the film almost entirely from the point of view of said fantastical creature. In more traditional films, the character of Amélie would be the love interest in Nino's story, and not the other way around, and she’d be played by Zooey Deschanel. If anything, he is a typical leading man archetype, an eccentric loner, working a job he hates to fund an obscure passion project, just waiting for the girl of his dreams to stumble into his life and turn it upside down, yet thankfully this is not his story, he is the supporting player and it is with his influence that Amélie finds her life being disrupted, just as she disrupts those around her.
Tautou is absolutely perfect as the eponymous mirth-maker. Gifted with the role of a title character and appearing in almost every scene yet with barely any dialogue, Tautou manages to express every emotion going through her exceptionally beautiful brown eyes, body language and face framed with a Louise Brooks bob. Interestingly, the role was originally written with Emily Watson in mind, but I think even she would have struggled to match Tautou’s blend of purity, yearning and a rare, beguiling charm. Be it when she is skimming stones, cracking a crème brulee or suppressing laughter during an early attempt at intercourse, Tautou is exquisite in the role she will probably always be best known for. Her delivery of the line “I am nobody’s little weasel” almost brings me to tears.
As usual with any Jeunet picture, the cinematography is beautiful. The colour scheme is heavily influenced by Brazilian artist Juarez Machado, particularly the use of rich browns, oranges and reds for the interior shots. A glowing orange outline will reveal a hidden key, or a glowing heart, and Jeunet’s elaborate camerawork lovingly follows faces, feet and hands as they go about their day, picking up stones and placing them in pockets for future skimming sessions. Some have shunned Jeunet’s debris-free vision of Paris, devoid of litter, ethnic diversity and graffiti, but at heart this is a whimsical fairytale, seen through the filter of its titular pixie’s naive, twee imagination, within which the harshest crimes are committed verbally, and easily remedied with Amélie’s own brand of karmic vengeance. In this world, garden gnomes can travel the world, lamps have nocturnal discussions with photographs of dogs and beggars refuse to accept money on a Sunday, as they are taking the day off.
Though the overarching narrative is one of romance, it is the comedy of the film that really shines through, predominantly from the cast of quirky characters that litter the screen, most of whom are played by actors from other Jeunet works. Be it the bathroom encounter of the hypochondriac Georgette (Isabelle Nanty) and the embittered Joseph (Dominique Pinon), the comeuppance of the bullish greengrocer Collignon (Urbain Cancelier) or a mistaken phonecall to an adult store during which our heroine is informed that “Fur pie doesn’t sell,” the comedic moments are many and varied. Yann Tiersen’s accordion-rich score is ever-so-French (I’m listening to it as I write, my feet have yet to stop tapping) and the occasional use of offbeat instrumentation such as a typewriter and bicycle chains further increases the levels of whimsy, as if that were even possible.
In my opinion, the best kind of film is one that leaves the viewer wanting to be a better person, and that is certainly the case here. The morals of Amélie are clear: be kind to others, be yourself, and enjoy the little things.
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