Am'©lie : scene analysis
iView Author: Evelyn Tu (Princeton, U.S.)
Email: withheld
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Unfolding “Am'©lie” scene analysis
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Can it be only seven years since Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “Le Fabuleux Destin d’Am'©lie Poulain” was released? Despite valleys and peaks and valleys in its fortunes, “Am'©lie” has grown so large in my estimation that it’s hard to believe it hasn’t always existed.
A while back, I had to write up an analysis of an impressive scene for my directing class. I don’t know why I thought I’d find something written on this aspect of “Am'©lie,” but that wasn’t to be. It’s very lucky that Jeunet included a generous amount of background and commentary on his DVD. As I studied the care he lavished on every detail, it occurred to me that the deeper subtext of “Am'©lie” is his love letter to the unlimited possibilities of film.
Below, you will find my handmade outline of elements a director needs to decide for any scene, followed by how I believe they are realized in “Am'©lie.” The first section gives the context and the second describes the cinematic language used to support that context. I did my best with the language but am entirely open to hearing about errors and omissions.
The scene described (two minutes into the DVD’s chapter 13) starts with Am'©lie anxiously awaiting a rendezvous with Nino. This one-minute trailer contains some of the same shots:
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PART 1: CONTEXT
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GENRE
French art film with a twist. A poetic, dark-comic fable.
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DIRECTORIAL STYLE
Auteur. Jeunet controls every detail. He went through 18 drafts of the script and made extensive storyboards. The result is a highly finished work of art.
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PLOT CLASSIFICATION
Classical with some twists. The fictional world is arranged in a very orderly manner, with its own set of logic. However, the director plays frequently with time and space to show the characters’ subjective states.
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PLOT SUMMARY
An unusual and sheltered childhood has led Am'©lie to a sheltered adulthood as a waitress in a Parisian caf'©, frequented by equally isolated people. After doing an anonymous good dead, she is convinced she can change lives of others with a few judicious tweaks to their environments. One day, she spies Nino collecting discarded pictures from photo booths. Nino is her soul mate, but she hesitates to reveal herself. As the painter Dufayel says, “She’d rather imagine herself relating to an absent person than build relationships with those around her.”
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UNDERLYING IDEA
Don’t be afraid to take a closer look at the strangers whose paths intersect with yours. Love ends loneliness.
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SCENE SETUP
Am'©lie has left a torn-up photo of herself for Nino to find and reassemble, with an invitation for him to meet her at the Two Windmills Caf'© at 4 p.m.
SCENE DRAMATIC ARCH
Am'©lie anxiously awaits Nino in the caf'©. When he is late, she imagines horrible things that kept him away. He finally arrives, but she denies she is the woman in the photo. She has her coworker slip Nino a note with new instructions. After he leaves, Am'©lie melts into a pool of water.
HOW THE SCENE ADVANCES THE PLOT
It gives Nino his first chance to see Am'©lie, who has been spying on him. It establishes the key obstacle to Am'©lie finding romance: herself. It tells us Am'©lie and Nino are feeling similar things.
WHAT THE SCENE SHOULD MAKE THE AUDIENCE FEEL
Urgency, suspense, bemusement.
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WHY THIS SCENE IS A BRILLIANT SOLUTION TO A PROBLEM
It makes something visible that is not usually visual: Fear, longing, indecisiveness, love.
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HOW THIS SCENE REFLECTS THE DIRECTOR’S OTHER SOLUTIONS
Throughout the film, Jeunet presents collections of objects and lists of things each person loves and hates to convey emotions and states of mind. In this scene, he employs his personal collection of TV clips to show potential reasons why Nino is late to the caf'©. Also, the film’s visual style has a candy-colored hyperrealism that supports his conception of a fabulous tale of chance and destiny.
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HOW THIS SCENE RELATES TO THE REST OF THE FILM
All of Am'©lie shows a world of simultaneous, unconnected events and a mystical sense of life going by. It presents a universe of individual poignant moments rising up and receding, where the chance crossing of paths can be utterly meaningful or meaningless.
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PART 2: CINEMATIC LANGUAGE
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ACTING
-Casting
Jeunet wanted not just interesting faces, which are typical of all his films, but also beautiful faces because this is a positive story. He said finding the main character is the best moment in making a film. For most parts, even the carnival ticket taker, he tested 15 to 20 people. “When you pick the best one, then it’s easy to direct him.”
-Big, small or flat acting
Nearly natural acting (except for winks at the camera) is exaggerated by the closeness of the wide lens, occasional slow motion, extreme angles, and surreal colors and lighting.
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WHOSE POV?
It is mostly from Am'©lie’s point of view, but sometimes a narrator provides us with more information than she has.
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BEATS
-Actors’ beats
The first beat occurs when Am'©lie denies that she’s the girl in the picture. The second beat occurs when Dufayel says, “She’s very fond of stratagems. In fact, she’s cowardly. Perhaps that’s why I can’t capture her look,” and Am'©lie realizes she missed a realistic opportunity to find her soul mate.
-Director’s beat
The point of focus changes when the waitress in the green sweater delivers a coffee to Nino, and when she moves away, Am'©lie is behind Nino spying on him through the menu glass.
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VISUAL ELEMENTS
The look is stylized to suggest a nearly timeless place representing the characters’ internal worlds. The colors were pushed to create an oversaturated, bittersweet quality. The digital intermediate process took only six weeks. “With this, everything is possible,” Jeunet says. “I love to play with everything. I don’t want to make some realistic movies. It could become boring for me.”
SPECIAL EFFECTS
Am'©lie’s animated melting into a pool of water is an homage to cartoonist Tex Avery. Jeunet had written a book Avery right before his death.
COLOR
Jeunet studied a Brazilian painter’s palette, which included reds, greens and yellows, with spots of bright blue for contrast. This is carried through in the walls, lighting, props, clothing and everything else. Jeunet says he chose these colors because it is a positive story: “I wanted a bright look. Even if it’s dark, it has to be shiny in some way.”
SET
This scene takes place in a real caf'© in Montmartre. Jeunet says, “This film is a big cheat. Paris isn’t like this. Except for Montmartre. Montmartre is very nice.”
PROPS
The set designers installed a clear menu glass in the caf'© so Am'©lie could spy on Nino. In other interiors, Jeunet selects bric a brac for clutter because he prefers “old things.”
LIGHTING
Varies between high-key for the caf'© to low-key in all of the other interior shots. In the apartment shots, there are visible light sources, but the colors often seem to be coming out of nowhere.
LENS CHOICE
Jeunet prefers to use a short lens, in the 14-to-25mm range, up close to his actors to give a whimsical look. This has the effect of exaggerating Audrey Tautou’s deer-like eyes. He only used a long lens when he wanted to simulate looking through a binocular.
DEPTH OF FIELD
Most of the scene has deep focus to establish the caf'©, but they use a more shallow focus when Nino and Am'©lie interact.
SHOT FRAMING
Open or closed:
The frame is “open,” as people enter and leave it as they go in and out of or move around the caf'©.
Camera angles:
Sometimes Jeunet positions the camera very low to the ground or up high like a surveillance camera. Often, the camera is canted. It’s very plainly unreal. Each angle is new; almost nothing is repeated, except when Nino talks with Am'©lie. This fragmented style is very dynamic to watch.
Patterns:
Every color shot has strong diagonal or horizontal lines to direct the viewer’s gaze.
CAMERA MOVEMENT
Two or three times, the camera cranes up from the floor to eye-level as it swoops in toward Am'©lie and Nino. This suggests urgency in both of their moods. The camera tracks her as she paces, waiting for Nino, like we’re pacing, too.
MASTER SHOTS
The caf'© is introduced as a montage of details instead of a single wide, deep-focus shot. A wide-angle shot sets up the key conversation when Am'©lie is revealed behind Nino.
CONTINUITY
As Am'©lie waits, a series of medium shots switch the point of interest from side to side. When Nino talks with Am'©lie, they are both on the frame’s right side. This is achieved by placing her beyond the clear glass behind him.
EYELINES
A mistaken eye-line is used when a different girl comes into the caf'© and Nino wonders if she is Am'©lie.
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SOUND DESIGN
-Music
Sentimental French accordion and piano music adds to the bittersweet tone for most of the movie. However, it fades away during this important scene so that the dialogues and sound effects carry the emotions.
-Voices
Includes normal dialogue, whispered internal monologue, and rapid-fire omniscient voiceover, all to signify Am'©lie’s urgent state of mind at waiting to meet her soul mate.
-Ambient sound/sound FX
Diagetic, somewhat exaggerated – caf'© sounds, street music, the marker squeaking on the menu glass, the flooding sound as she turns into a pool of water;
Non-diagetic – meaningless noises that punctuate the beginnings and ends of scenes, noises that simultaneously describe the scene in the montage that aren’t from the images.
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CUTTING STYLE
– Montage editing
Classic montage style is used for most of the scene.
-Symbolic editing
Ridiculous fragments of collected TV clips are mixed in with B&W scenes of Nino to symbolize the possible terrible fate that has prevented him from arriving at the caf'©.
-Pacing
As Am'©lie waits, time is extended, and the shots are held longer. As Am'©lie gets more anxious, the montage of her fantasy about him becoming a Mujahidin in Afghanistan picks up speed. Then when he arrives, the pace calms down again.
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Wonderful analysis…
my version of Amelie
http://dnacritic.blogspot.com/
krishna, thanks! I enjoyed your blog post, too. We definitely saw the same movie. As you say, “The minute moments of the film makes us feel close to it.”
Nice.
Mitch, thanks and thanks for your encouragement. I was telling a friend I had written this in part with him in mind, so that he could see all the things I look at when I watch a movie.
This is why I often see value in movies that other people dismiss as being unoriginal — there are so many creative choices to be made above and beyond the plot and dialogues.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t some movies that make me wonder why they bothered at all, but usually they are the ones that are formulated to appeal to a demographic more than they are about great story telling.
good work
thanks for wonderful “review”
Your technical observation of the movie is marvelous.am guilty of watching movies for story actors and directors. This totally gives a whole new dimension. And i guess you chose the movie with highest posibilty too
Amelie is a wonderful experince.
I have seen amelie twice. I am so determined to see it again this upcoming weekend after reading your review.
Badmash, it’s hard to pay so much attention to all of the details the first time I watch a movie — especially if it’s really working its magic. But there are often brilliant shots that make me want to re-examine a film and figure out how they were done. I usually notice certain obvious things, like camera movement and angles, extra long takes, unusual color palettes, high-key/low-key lighting, and audio effects. Maybe it’s just me, but I suspect there are others who do the same.
Evelyn, what a wonderful analysis! And what great writing. I finally got around to reading this piece – I know, a bit late! – and really, really enjoyed re-living a great film with you. It is a wonderful fable and an ode to the power of action, told quietly through the “minute moments”, as you and Krishna call them…