Simple Pleasures as a Source of Happiness in Amelie

Amélie is a movie that will warm your heart and leave you with a feeling of wanting to better the world. Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet uses happiness as a central theme and incorporates many instances of simple pleasures throughout the film. He presents this motif immediately in the opening sequence. While the opening credits are rolling, a young Amélie is shown enjoying various simple pleasures. Among other things, she has a face painted upside down on her chin so that her upside-down lips are the faces mouth. She smooshes her face against glass while making funny faces and knocks down the first domino in a row causing them all to fall. She tries on a pair of thick round glasses and bats her magnified eyelashes, uses her fingers to make a painted on face talk, rubs the edge of a wine glass to make it sing, pulls apart a string of paper dolls, uses a leaf to whistle, pulls a long strand of dried glue from her fingers, and eats, one by one a raspberry from each of her fingers until her cheeks bulge.

Jeunet uses a unique introduction of each character by showing their individual likes and dislikes. These corky simple pleasures give you a feeling of who each character is by showing a few things that either makes them happy or unhappy. Amélie likes "dipping her hand into sacks of grains, cracking crème brulèe with a teaspoon, and skipping stones at St. Martin's Cannel" (Jeunet,2001) It is also noted that she enjoys noticing little details no one else notices and looking back at the faces of people in the theater. Amélie hates "in old movies how drivers don't watch the road" (Jeunet, 2001).

As a child, Amélie had no contact with her father except when he gave her a yearly checkup. This rare contact made her heart skip making her father think she had a heart condition. Instead of going to school, she had to be homeschooled by her mother- until her mother was killed when a tourist, bent on ending her life, jumped from the roof of Notre Dame and landed on top of her. After the accident her father became obsessed with building a shrine in memorandum of is wife. She was a very lonely child and so she retreated into her imagination for playmates. Despite her shyness, she moved to the city and works as a waitress at a café. After the death of Princess Diana, a series of cause and effect events lead to the discovery of a childhood treasure hidden behind a tile in Amélie's bathroom.

Amélie decides to find the owner of the memory box and gauge his reaction. She determines that if he is pleased to have been reacquainted with his childhood memories than she would "become a regular do-gooder and if not, too bad" (Jeunet, 2001). The trinkets convince him to reunite with his daughter and his young grandson, whom he had never met. Simple pleasures enlighten him and push him to happiness. Another of his simple pleasures is picking the meat off of the carcass of a roasted chicken - at the end of the movie he enjoys this with his grandson.

Amélie, pleased, goes on to help her neighbors, co-workers, and even her father in unique ways. She steals the garden gnome from her mother's shrine and has a stewardess take pictures of the gnome travelling around the world. At first this causes her father much distress but eventually pushes him to live his dream of traveling the world. She returns the simple pleasure of sight to a blind man by walking him through the streets of Paris - explaining everything she sees. She attempts to play cupid by introducing a regular in the café to the lady who works at the cigarette counter. One of her neighbors hasn't left his flat in twenty years because his bones are as brittle as glass. She makes a video of things he has missed, including the Tour De France, for The Glass Man. She even goes to the extreme of forging a long-lost letter of the landlady's late husband confessing his undying love for her. Simple pleasures are a hindrance to Amélie because she spends all her time helping those around her and neglects her own happiness.

During this journey fate brings her to a photo-both in a train station where she sees Nino collecting torn-up and discarded photos. "While Amélie lacked playmates, Nino had too many" (Jeunet, 2001). The film cuts to a scene of Nino being picked on as a child. As children, Amélie and Nino lived within five miles of each other and both wished for a brother or sister to be with all the time. Amélie's heart is aflutter when it appears that Nino had noticed her but instead he grabs a shopping bag and chases after the man with red shoes who had left it behind. Amélie runs after them both, watching. When the red-shoed man gets into a van Nino jumps onto his mo-ped and speeds off after him, dropping something from the side of his bike. Amélie catches up to the book and opens it, surprised to find a collection of torn photos taped together with missing pieces. Inhibited by shyness Amélie finds it hard to get the courage to return the album. Instead she dresses up in costume and takes pictures of herself in the photo-both then tears them into pieces for Nino to find. Nino does find the pieces and solves the mystery Amélie has orchestrated. But Amélie is too shy to admit it was her. Luckily, The Glass Man decides to help Amélie. He convinces her to seize the opportunity to interact with Nino. It ultimately leads to Amélie and Nino falling in love and her eventual happiness. The film ends on a happy note that inspires you enjoy the simple pleasures as the tagline suggests: "She'll change your life."

References

Jeunet, J. (Director). (2001). Amélie[Motion picture]. New York: Miramax Home
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