Amélie, French Film Guides (review)

Isabelle Vanderschelden's Amélie is a recent contribution to the reputable French Film Guide series edited by Ginette Vincendeau. As the editor remarks, each book of this series offers an authoritative and entertaining guide of films from the beginning years to present day. Written by French film scholars, each calls to experts, students of French films studies and novice cinéphiles alike. Vanderschelden's contribution is an essential tool for any instructor using the film in the classroom just as it is a crucial reference for scholars researching in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's cinema. Clearly written and well documented, her book, simply called Amélie, gives insight into the film and its making that would otherwise be unknown to the public. With great care, the author traces the numerous technical elements, collaborations, and narrative components which have brought about the film's success and its cult-film status.

The book includes a synopsis which is further completed throughout, an introduction, four main chapters of rich scene detail with analysis, a conclusion, four appendices which offer full credits, statistics and tables, filmography along with a selected bibliography. Vanderschelden has her chapters flow logically from discussion of Jeunet's earlier feature films to Amélie as social phenomenon. She explains with great insight the socio-historical and cinematographic context of Jeunet's blockbuster, while working through more in-depth scene analysis. The result is a well-balanced project with an international scope; this is, perhaps, one of the book's strongest elements. The author understands that though Amélie develops greatly from a patchwork of cultural references recognizable particularly to the French, the film borrows much from international cinema, especially Hollywood film production from which Jeunet gained experience with Alien Resurrection (1997). While she quotes Jeunet in stating that "Amélie is [his] personal film" (5), she considers that the film has an international life all its own; to convince the reader of this critical statement, she includes a well-documented reception study, a look at the director's Anglo-Saxon-style marketing strategies, and the "continued life of the film." She weaves through contemporaneous films, both inside and outside the Hexagon, to illustrate the tendencies which bring us to the creation of Amélie's highly-stylized Montmartre; in the chapter called "Digital magic: the special effects of Amélie," for example, poignant scene details set against Christian Metz's general classification of special effects give the reader the general skills to analyze production techniques and the viewer's perception of digital and special film devices.

Though all chapters bring informative and creative topics, the second chapter in particular, "Something old, something new: Amélie's narrative," deserves attention, as it breaks down the plot development to highlight Jeunet's strategy in introducing characters, genre adoption, cinematographic influences, and the evolution of what will become the cultural icon "Amélie." Here, the author highlights a great majority of the themes essential for a true understanding of Jeunet's on-screen visual preoccupations and recurring narrative motifs, providing the reader with a clear understanding of how, and to which extent, the film can be qualified as a singular highly-stylized collage in recent big-budget cinema, recalling her co-edited book with Darren Waldron, France at the Flicks: Trends in Contemporary French Popular Cinema (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007). The conclusion, "Amélie and cultural diversity," places the film into the cinematographic climate since 2001, focusing on Amélie and Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement (Un long dimanche de fiançailles, 2004) as a new visual and narrative type of moviemaking in France—one that calls to international audiences, with a dash of cultural specificity and universal interest. The author's ending statement that "Jeunet has moved even closer to a new form of cultural diversity, distinct from Hollywood, but no longer strictly defined by its nationality" (96) clearly sums up a convincing assessment of Amélie's success without sidestepping the importance of Jeunet's film training in Hollywood or its...