I want to say that I saw Amelie for the first time on Boxing Day 2001 at the Kino, with Laura - would that be right, or just an imagined recollection created after the fact? Maybe I actually watched it by myself, with someone else, a different place, a different time? Last night, after rewatching it for the first time in ages, I took the hazardous step of flicking through my old handwritten diary from around that time to look for clues, but to no avail.
That would've been opening day, which figures - as both possible actual fact and imagined one - seeing as Jeunet was one of my favourites at the time, probably actually my favourite director, mostly thanks to The City of Lost Children (a whole other story in itself) and of course Delicatessen was pretty great too. I'd been excited about it beforehand, having first learned about it through a postcard marketing campaign - those ones that were (and still are) to be found in various likely locations, wire card-stands and piles in music and book stores and the like.
Of course, it was, indeed, fabuleux - it caught me, I think, just at a time when my own sensibilities were transitioning and balanced in the way that the film's are, taking in both the darker elements of Jeunet's earlier work and a far more vividly colourful, whimsically optimistic tone. And so anyway I took it to heart.
I probably watched it two or three more times in the two or three years after that; I cut out one of those little postage stamp-sized reproductions of the poster from an Astor calendar and carried it around with me in my wallet - its reminder of the brightly lit possibilities of life were a comfort when I began doing the rounds of work-related cocktail parties, interviews, seasonal clerkships during those later years of university. And so on - it was a totem, a touchstone, the idea of it treasured even if, over the years, less and less acutely. From extemporanea it seems like I haven't watched it since before 2005, meaning that it's been more or less literally a decade since last viewing - a sobering thought in itself - but my affection for it has endured.
* * *
Anyway, last night - Friday night, end of a long week, and coming back to Amelie was like spending time with an old friend, one who reminds you of times past in a way that's good but kind of bittersweet. It seemed a touch more poignant and sadder in the margins than I recalled - but then I wonder whether actually I always found those things in the film. Of course, I'm older now, so some of the situations resonated with more of an empathetic charge, at times from personal experience; also, even having spent just a week or so in Paris since last watch has reinforced the impact of the film's (luminous, fantastic, romanticised) depiction of the city of lights. The underlying sweetness still comes through just as strongly, along with the sharp little acerbic bits that make it even better - and so basically it's still wonderful and for reasons that aren't all that different from why I thought so on that first go round...whatever else may have changed, Amelie is still a film to keep close to the heart.
That would've been opening day, which figures - as both possible actual fact and imagined one - seeing as Jeunet was one of my favourites at the time, probably actually my favourite director, mostly thanks to The City of Lost Children (a whole other story in itself) and of course Delicatessen was pretty great too. I'd been excited about it beforehand, having first learned about it through a postcard marketing campaign - those ones that were (and still are) to be found in various likely locations, wire card-stands and piles in music and book stores and the like.
Of course, it was, indeed, fabuleux - it caught me, I think, just at a time when my own sensibilities were transitioning and balanced in the way that the film's are, taking in both the darker elements of Jeunet's earlier work and a far more vividly colourful, whimsically optimistic tone. And so anyway I took it to heart.
I probably watched it two or three more times in the two or three years after that; I cut out one of those little postage stamp-sized reproductions of the poster from an Astor calendar and carried it around with me in my wallet - its reminder of the brightly lit possibilities of life were a comfort when I began doing the rounds of work-related cocktail parties, interviews, seasonal clerkships during those later years of university. And so on - it was a totem, a touchstone, the idea of it treasured even if, over the years, less and less acutely. From extemporanea it seems like I haven't watched it since before 2005, meaning that it's been more or less literally a decade since last viewing - a sobering thought in itself - but my affection for it has endured.
* * *
Anyway, last night - Friday night, end of a long week, and coming back to Amelie was like spending time with an old friend, one who reminds you of times past in a way that's good but kind of bittersweet. It seemed a touch more poignant and sadder in the margins than I recalled - but then I wonder whether actually I always found those things in the film. Of course, I'm older now, so some of the situations resonated with more of an empathetic charge, at times from personal experience; also, even having spent just a week or so in Paris since last watch has reinforced the impact of the film's (luminous, fantastic, romanticised) depiction of the city of lights. The underlying sweetness still comes through just as strongly, along with the sharp little acerbic bits that make it even better - and so basically it's still wonderful and for reasons that aren't all that different from why I thought so on that first go round...whatever else may have changed, Amelie is still a film to keep close to the heart.
