Amélie (2001) The right to waste your life
"In this terrifying world, all we have are the connections that we make."
It’s a strange feeling when you don’t remember a movie. I was pretty sure I had watched Amélie but I did not remember much about it, except the songs. La Valse d'Amélie transcended time and became pop culture. I remember listening to Yann Tiersen on my little iPod back in 2008. I enjoyed the rewatch as if it was the first time. It’s a very soothing movie, the way it is narrated, the colors, the music, and odd behaviours that to me are perfectly normal (like putting your hand inside the sack of lentils). It also depicts the kind of Paris I find appealing, its public transport, cafés, photomatons, and weird French people.
The conversations Amelié had with the fragile painter were sheer delight. Like when she mentioned to him she had met someone but didn’t really speak to him, and the painter replied “so she imagines a relationship with someone absent, rather than creating a bond with people around her” in spanish certainly sounds better and I bet in French it also makes more sense, the point is that Amélie holds herself to an idea of a person because she likes the stratagems, the illusions, the little miracles and games one plays. I felt personally attacked.
At first I thought of this as a romcom, but I think it is more accurate to describe it as a movie about the many shapes and flavours love could take: returning a treasure box; stealing your father’s gnome from his garden and send him pictures; help people fall in love, enchant the world. And yes it also depicts grand romantic gestures, such as the encounters she plans with her crush. If Amélie prefers to live in her dreams being an introverted girl that is her right. “Wasting your own life is an inalienable right.” For a moment I thought Amélie would choose herself and she would keep herself busy doing nice things and enjoying these little pleasures. Why would that be a waste? Just because she was not with someone romantically didn’t mean she didn’t love. But no, in the 2000s we were not ready for such a transgressive depiction.
This made me think that in a far extreme and in contrast to Amélie’s personality there is Fleabag. They both share the quirkiness, good style to dress, and living in chaotic cities. I thought of Fleabag because upon also rewatching the first season I noticed two things: The first was that during the speech of the “sexhibition” the grandmother says “sex brings life” and meanwhile Fleabag thinks that it was because of sex that she hurt her friend, so not all the time sex brings life, sex could actually bring a lot of problems, even death. The second thing was the rant Fleabag tells the bank guy about fucking everything up, and how her fuckability was all she had. Is that all that we can strive for? Can pleasures be found somewhere else beyond sex? Of course, I just like to pose these questions for my own thrill.
It is perfectly fine if Amélie would have decided to stay on her own, or just keep enjoying the game she had with the photobooth guy, and the same for Fleabag, because they were living great lives, Fleabag may be just more depressed but who isn’t these days.
Ultimately it is rewarding to care. Both Amélie and Fleabag were characters that cared deeply about others, I am not sure if it was a way of avoiding themselves, but their lives were certainly interesting because not everything was about only them, but their many relationships with others, not only the romantic ones.