History Film / Amelie

In 2015, the film got a Broadway adaptation starring Phillipa Soo as the title character.

* EmpathicEnvironment: It starts raining when young Amelie's gold fish gets dumped into the creek.

* TheXOfY: The movie's French title translates to ''The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain'' in English.

* OneWordTitle

* PhotoBoothMontage: Amelie is looking through other people's discarded photos from such a booth, which Nino has collected into an album.

* PhotoMontage: The credits feature Nino's carefully compiled photo album, now with pictures of all the film's characters added.

The plot follows Amélie Poulain, a lonely young UsefulNotes/{{Paris}}ian waitress with simple pleasures, as she decides to become a sort of guardian angel to those around her: reuniting a stranger with a box of his childhood treasures, gently prompting her retired father to follow his dreams of world travel, matchmaking café regulars, playing practical jokes on a greengrocer who's being cruel to his assistant, writing love letters to a woman whose husband left her, etc. During her adventures, she meets an odd young man called Nino, who we quickly realize is her soulmate -- but she is too shy to make direct contact. She must find the courage to fix her own life as she's been fixing those of others.

The plot follows Amélie, a lonely young UsefulNotes/{{Paris}}ian waitress with simple pleasures, as she decides to become a sort of guardian angel to those around her: reuniting a stranger with a box of his childhood treasures, gently prompting her retired father to follow his dreams of world travel, matchmaking café regulars, playing practical jokes on a greengrocer who's being cruel to his assistant, writing love letters to a woman whose husband left her, etc. During her adventures, she meets an odd young man called Nino, who we quickly realize is her soulmate -- but she is too shy to make direct contact. She must find the courage to fix her own life as she's been fixing those of others.

The plot follows Amélie, a lonely young Parisian waitress with simple pleasures, as she decides to become a sort of guardian angel to those around her: reuniting a stranger with a box of his childhood treasures, gently prompting her retired father to follow his dreams of world travel, matchmaking café regulars, playing practical jokes on a greengrocer who's being cruel to his assistant, writing love letters to a woman whose husband left her, etc. During her adventures, she meets an odd young man called Nino, who we quickly realize is her soulmate -- but she is too shy to make direct contact. She must find the courage to fix her own life as she's been fixing those of others.

* DriverFacesPassenger: One of the things Amelie does not like are drivers in American films who don't watch the road. Cut to a scene from the American film ''Father's Little Dividend'' where the actor drives a desk and looks at his passenger 99% of the time. In the DVD director's commentary, Jean-Pierre Jeunet comments on how difficult it is to find a clip exhibiting this trope when you're specifically looking for one.

* DriverFacesPassenger: A pet peeve of Amélie when watching movies in cinema.

* TheScream: Colignin lets out the first of a few when he realises he's brushing his teeth with [[ItTastesLikeFeet foot cream]].
* ScreamsLikeALittleGirl: When Colignon causes a dramatic short circuit thanks to Amélie's prank.

* CreativeClosingCredits: The main characters are seen as photos in Nino's album, including face of the unseen narrator. The opening credits are also very subtly creative: the young Amélie is seen doing quirky things related to the credits, including:

* EmpathicEnvironment: It starts raining when young Amelie's golf fish gets dumped into the creek.

* FunnySpoon: Amélie holding one up, with her trademark smile, before cracking the surface of crème brulée.

* {{Gaslighting}}: Amélie sneaks into her grocer's apartment and subtly messes with his stuff, changing the size of his shoes, the numbers on his speed dial, etc., to punish him for mocking his ambiguously-handicapped and one-armed employee.

* IWantMyMommy: After Collignon gets sufficiently gaslighted, he decides to call his mother.

* UnflatteringPhotoID: A central theme, as Nino searches under photo booths for photos which people have torn up and rejected, which he places in an album.

** AmWhen élie wonders how many couples are having orgasms at that moment, we get a montage of the couples doing so.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: According to the narrator in the epilogue, "Félix Lerbier learns there are more links in his brain than atoms in the universe." It should have been "than ''stars'' in the universe".

* CoolOldGuy: Raymond Dufayel, the shut-in in Amélie's building.
** One of the most awesome things ever about Monsieur Dufayel is that he's able to be completely spot-on about everything that's going on in Amélie's head and even mentions uncomfortable truths about her and her life. Throughout the movie, he almost becomes a guru of sorts for her.

* TheFreelanceShameSquad: The laughing crowd in front of Collignon's shop after Amelie delivers her joke about him not having a heart.

* GayParee: But of course, and deliberately more so than in real life.
** On his English-language DVD commentary, Jeunet jokes that in real life Paris is totally horrible, except for his native Montmartre.

* GoodFeelsGood: Pretty much Amelie's motivation for the bulk of the movie.

** When Amélie wonders "how many couples are having orgasms right now?"

** On a meta level, the painting also serves to illustrate a need to move on, resulting in Dufayel finally painting other pictures, after his scene with Lucien reveals how unhealthy his Renoir fixation is getting.

* NarrativeFiligree: TheMovie. ''Amélie'' frequently delves into irrelevant events, such as marking Amélie's conception occurring at the exact time that a fly is crushed, that wine glasses "dance" on a moving tablecloth unseen, and that an elderly gentleman erases his deceased friend from his notebook of phone numbers. Additionally, almost every named character ([[UpToEleven or animal]] in the case of Philomène's cat) is noted as liking or disliking something in order to give detail to the world. The minor subplot about the death of Princess Diana also qualifies.

* SceneryPorn

* SugarBowl: Played straight with the setting, but averted with the people.
** Paris is shown to be a beautiful, whimsical, and most of all, extremely clean place. While Paris is, indeed, a lively and wonderful city, it's also quite shabby in many places. The production meticulously cleaned up their shooting locations to make it look more colorful and idealized. We see very little of the poverty and gang graffiti that pervades the city. They also strictly avoided very modern locations to give Paris a more quaint and old-fashioned feel.
** In spite of the film's overall sweet tone, it does have an undercurrent of shallowness. Many of the people that Amélie helps are still stuck with their old problems at the end of the film, and the most she can do is give them a brief moment of pleasure. The jerks she meets are only getting her revenge instead of a life lesson, e.g. Collignon is not shown to have changed his ways with Lucien.[[invoked]]