Amelie

Last June's "Moulin Rouge," from writer/director Baz Luhrmann, was quite an entertaining film if you could overlook its extremely stupid elements. The characters all spoke English in a film set in Paris, the plot sometimes strayed so far from accepted bounds of logic that you could only throw up your hands, and the drama relied heavily on the music of Phil Collins and Elton John.

"Amelie from Montmartre," a newly-imported French film co-written and directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet ("Delicatessen"), can be thought of as "Moulin Rouge" without the stupid elements. Of course, Luhrmann and Jeunet have not copied one another, but they share some truly important things: a fondness for virtuosic direction, an unadulterated zest for storytelling, an unrepentant joy in fantasy, and, most importantly, a desire to create magic in cinema. And they both have miraculously managed to communicate all of these things in their films. However, "Amelie from Montmartre" is undeniably superior because its stars are cuter, its plot smacks more of reality, its characters speak French in France, and it doesn't have freaking Genesis in it.

Admittedly, the opening moments of this film are annoying enough to make you fondly recall "In the Air Tonight." Jeunet wants to tell everything you could possibly want to know in his introduction, which never augurs well. An omnipresent narrator, smarty-pants affectations and intrusive action-film cinematography (do we really need these dizzying zooms up to every new character we meet?) make this some mighty tedious filmmaking.

But once the narrator quits his rambling, the story actually starts and Amelie Poulain, denizen of the Montmartre neighboorhood of Paris, lover of bright colors and lit candles, cracker of creme brulées, and introverted but curious citizen of her inner world, finally becomes the center of the film. This last is especially important because Audrey Tautou, the actress playing Amelie, is extremely cute, with huge brown eyes, mischevious yet sincere smile, and insouciantly girlish movements. Any movie that features her on camera is bound to have some appeal.

Emboldened by one fateful discovery that leads her into the world, Amelie gains a love of action—at first by small increments, then by leaps and bounds. She takes it upon herself to help her neighbors and coworkers at the bar Deux Moulins in ingenious, subtle, entertaining ways. And in the course of aiding her fellow humans, she develops a crush on another extremely pretty human being named Nino Quincampoix (Mathieu Kassovitz). The subsequent pursuit spans most of the major landmarks of Montmartre, the entire Parisian Metro, and fantastic coincidences galore, but it hinges on Amelie's reluctance to give herself up emotionally to another human being.

"Times are tough for dreamers," a female porn-shop employee tells our heroine when she asks if Nino has a girlfriend, but you won't find any evidence to back that statement up in this film. Once the film lifts off, Jeunet's athletic camerawork seems more than appropriate to the grand chase on which Amelie and Nino embark. His characters seem far more real when they are acting then when they are talked about, and he mines both humor and pathos from their stories with humanity. His stylized Paris, as seen in Amelie's impossibly gorgeous apartment, Nino's graphic-design savantry, and the perfect light in which everything shines, teems with an unreality that suggests the possiblity of, well, magic.

Tautou's luminous eyes and magnetic face also do a lot to suggest that possibility, of course, as do Kassovitz's genial handsomeness and eager smiles. Jeunet's supercute fantasy sequences (Amelie's ceramic animals discussing her life, Nino asking a photograph about Amelie) sound ludicrous on the page but look convincing on these actors' faces. The path they take to their joyous conclusion is a little protracted, a miscalculation by Jeunet and his co-writer Guillame Laurant, but it's hard to get too mad about their desire to dwell in this realm just a little longer. This may be an unserious universe, without much psychological weight or depth, but sometimes you want to come out of a movie feeling lighter than air, and this is exactly the effect which Jeunet accomplishes.

Jeunet dreams as much and as fervently as his protagonists do, and he is absolutely convinced both that magic is real and that we can create it. Despite his missteps in the film's opening reel, "Amelie from Montmartre" eventually puts forward Jeunet's conviction with such glorious assurance and passion that we believe it too. The French title of this film translates as "The Fabulous Destiny of Amelie Poulain," and after you watch this film you'll only be able to respond: "Yes."

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