Amélie: A Beautiful Cinematography

This is the second time I watched Amélie. I used to watch this movie with my mom 3 years ago because my mom loved French movies. Before, I just watched this movie for fun and for entertainment so I did not pay much attention to other elements of this movie. First, I did not know the leading lady, Audrey Tautou, was in the movie “The Da Vinci Code”. Second, this time I focused more on the cinematography and saw the great achievement in French movies at that moment.

Source: IMDb

There are some scenes in the movie that I found very interesting. Two scenes had shown the characteristics of Amélie throughout the movie. The scene where Amélie was sitting in the movie theater and watching a movie. At that scene, Amélie had broken the fourth wall to talk to the audience. The cameraman had used the technique of extreme close up to capture her face while she was talking and only focused on that. Then, she talked about what she liked in the movie. For example, she liked to see people in the theater in the dark; the camera moved to the audience behind her as her head turned back and the color was dark to show that the movie theater was completely dark where no one could see her watching them. At this scene, the cinematography had used extremely wide shots to capture the whole audience from behind the dolly to show their face (how focusing they were in that movie they were watching).

Another scene that I felt funny and showed innocence and naiveness of Amélie was when the narrator talked about her hobby which was putting her hands inside every bean basket. The camera at this scene had used a wide shot from Amélie's shoulder to her hand inside the bean basket. Then the camera moved to the next scene which used once again the extreme close up of Amélie’s face. This time, we could see her face smiling, a beautiful and funny smile, holding a spoon. That close up told us more about Amélie, a person who did not care so much about what people were thinking. She wanted to break the rule and do whatever she wanted. The scene when she found a tin box inside the wall was also important. First the camera focused mostly on the television where it was reporting the death of Princess Diana as the narrator said that an event of August 30th, 1997 had changed the life of Amélie. Then, it moved to Amélie by zooming in on her shocking face after she heard the news. She was holding a bottle and she dropped a cap and the cap was rolling to the wall and broke a piece of brick. The camera followed the cap rolling to the wall. When she found a tin box and she opened it and saw some old stuff which she called treasure, she decided to find out whose it belonged to. Then, in the next scene, the camera was on top using the extremely wide shot to capture Amélie lying on the bed and slowly zooming in. It captured her expression as the narrator told us that she was thinking about what she was going to do.

This scene made me remember the movie “American Beauty” where Lesture Burnham was lying on bed and staring at the ceiling, roses were falling and the image of Angela Haye was on the ceiling. It is kinda cool because that type of cinematography can show what the character is thinking and what is going on in their minds.