Amélie

Movie Information

In Brief: Returning to France after the mixed blessing of helming a big-budget Hollywood film, Alien Resurrection, Jean-Pierre Jeunet disproves Thomas Wolfe’s adage that you can’t go home again. Not only did he go home, but once there he made his best film yet: the utterly captivating Amélie (Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain), an instant classic and the sort of magical work that reminds us how truly fine movies at their best can be. Yes, Amélie is a souffle of a movie. It has no burning message to deliver. What it does have is perhaps more important: It has joy, it has a heart, it has imagination, it has a sense of humor about life. It is alive with the possibilities of film and the possibilities of life and its surprises. This excerpt was taken from a review by Ken Hanke originally published on Jan. 1, 2000.
Score:

Genre: Fantasticated Comedy Romance
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Starring: Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Rufus, Lorella Cravotta, Serge Merlin
Rated: R

The Hendersonville Film Society will show Amélie on Sunday, Aug. 13, at 2 p.m. in the Smoky Mountain Theater at Lake Pointe Landing Retirement Community, 333 Thompson St., Hendersonville.

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About Ken Hanke
Head film critic for Mountain Xpress from December 2000 until his death in June 2016. Author of books "Ken Russell's Films," "Charlie Chan at the Movies," "A Critical Guide to Horror Film Series," "Tim Burton: An Unauthorized Biography of the Filmmaker."

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