Headscratchers / Amélie

• Everybody gets a happy (or at least deserved) ending... except Georgette and Joseph. Their romance goes up in flames and we never get to see how it's resolved. If it's meant to show Amélie that not all her meddling is going to turn out well, how come we never see that?
  • I don't think it was supposed to teach a lesson. I think it was just that people are going to be people.
  • I got the impression they were the type of people who enjoy having a torrential relationship with a loved one they're able to kvetch about, and wouldn't really be happy otherwise.
  • It's also that French movies are generally okay with that — in American movies romance is about the destination, in French movies romance is about the journey.
  • Actually, lots of people don't get a particularly happy ending. Georgette and Joseph are back to being lonely, the writer is still unpublished, Lucien still works for a jerk, and the old artist is still trapped by his infirmity. Nothing particularly good happens to several other characters.
    • Well, the writer does look fairly cheery when he sees that quote from his novel painted on the wall. Granted, it's not exactly the same as being published, but people are still seeing and possibly being inspired by his words. That's not exactly nothing for a writer.
    • And the artist has made a new friend and helped her find some happiness in life. That's not nothing either.
  • Could be that this is a case of Earn Your Happy Ending; Amélie can bring brief moments of happiness into the lives of others, but just as she needs to take charge of her own life in order to achieve lasting happiness, so too do they.
    • Just so. The only characters who have a happy ending that 'sticks' are the characters who take some personal hand in their own happiness.
  • Also, their relationship breaks down in part due to their own personality issues. Joseph's a bit of an obsessively jealous creep, and Georgette's a neurotic hypochondriac. Amélie can manipulate them into starting a relationship, but she can't overcome their own personal flaws for them.
• How exactly do those telephone booths work?
  • If they work the same way as in the UK, it's easily explained. Firstly, all phone booths have a number, or else they wouldn't be able to connect to the telephone network. Frequently this number is displayed inside the booth for engineers and reporting malfunction booths by their number. Secondly, you don't have to pay to use a booth to call a public service — normally this takes the form of calling the emergency services, but what's very important here is that other phone booths count as public services. Thus, with a little snooping around and absolutely no money, you can call a phone booth from another one, as Amélie did.
    • If they don't work the same way as in the UK, no idea.
• What caused Amélie to be so, well, unusual? We know that the film dismisses Asperger's and schizophrenia as the cause.
  • Nothing; she's just a bit of a shy, socially awkward introvert with an active imagination. It's not that unusual. I suppose if you have to pinpoint a cause we can suggest that her parents, also being rather eccentric and idiosyncratic people, instilled her with a few quirks due to their upbringing, but it's not like her issues particularly demand a Freudian Excuse. She's just a bit of an oddball, she's not a Serial Killer or anything.
  • It's actually fairly common, particularly among people who have had a sheltered upbringing. This troper is very similar and has no disorders to speak of. Introverts tend to have active imaginations anyway, and Amélie seems to be naturally kind and open-hearted enough to want to help people. It genuinely is just how she is as a person. As the above troper said, not everything that isn't "normal behaviour" needs a Freudian Excuse.
  • Considering her parents' personalities, is going to be hard that Amelie didn't end being an oddball or at least being a bit eccentric.
• Will Madeleine Wallace find out her husband's letter is a fake? She could decide to sue the postal service and then find out they never sent her a letter of apologies and the belated letter.
  • This is more a speculation than a headscratcher, since it's not really a plothole, but regardless it's incredibly unlikely under this hypothesis at least. Even if she was willing to sue (which she clearly isn't, since she's just happy to have some confirmation that her husband loved her), she has no grounds to sue the postal service. They weren't responsible for her husband's death, they weren't responsible for posting the letter, and the circumstances in which the letter was apparently delayed — a plane crash in the Alps — were beyond the control or reasonable influence of the post office. No remotely sane lawyer would even let her into the office with that kind of case, much less try taking it to court.