In 2008, Entertainment Weekly named the film poster to its list of the top 25 film posters of the past 25 years.
The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Original Screenplay and Best Cinematography. Elvis Mitchell’s New York Times review called it “fabulous…a sugar rush of a movie” Roger Ebert echoed that sentiment, calling the film “a delicious pastry…You see it, and later when you think about it, you smile.” America must have had a sweet tooth in that particular moment: Amélie grossed over $33 million, setting box office records for a French film and becoming one of the highest grossing foreign language films of all time. That fall, less than two months after 9/11, Amélie (again retitled) opened in the United States.
Amelie poulain movie#
(Rumor had it that the movie was deemed “not serious.”) Redemption came quickly, however, when in September the movie (now titled, in English, Amélie of Montmartre) won the AGF People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival, that festival’s most important award. Weeks after it was released, the 2001 Cannes Film Festival opened, showing five French films in competition, and seemingly snubbing Jeunet’s film. (Interestingly, the role had originally been written for the English actress Emily Watson).īut even as it raked in rave reviews and francs at the box office, Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain was also courting controversy. French actress Audrey Tautou, who was cast in the title role with just a few feature credits under her belt, quickly became a recognizable celebrity. Its fans included President Jacques Chirac, who called watching the film at the Elysée Palace, where he hosted a special screening, “one of the best evenings of my life.” Prime Minister Lionel Jospin championed Amélie Poulain as justifying state support for the French film industry.
Four million people saw it in its first two months in theatres alone, and it had sold 7.5 million tickets and grossed over $40 million by the end of its run in its home country. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet-who had previously directed a post-apocalyptic comedy and two science fiction movies (including Alien: Resurrection)-and written by Guillaume Laurant, from a story by Jeunet and Laurant, the film was an instant and wild hit. On April 25, 2001, global cinema changed forever, and a new era began in French cinema with the release of Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (called simply Amélie in the U.S., and the movie on which the new musical onstage at the Ahmanson Theatre through Januis based).
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