Once Upon a Time that Never Was: Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001)

Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001) was both successful and controversial. Despite its popularity, the film was regarded by various film critics as nostalgic, nationalist, and racist. This interpretation of the film ignores the complex engagement with the past in Amélie and the numerous parallels established between Amélie’s personal interventions and Jeunet’s own act of making the film. Rather than expressing a nostalgic desire for a bygone era of cultural homogeneity, Amélie suggests that no such era ever existed.