Major Workshop European Culture - Essay

Dishonest romanticization or honest daydreaming? – A look at the fabulous

representation of Paris in Amélie (2001).

Dorián F. Ertl – 13989510 – University of Amsterdam

February 2023

Word count: 3060

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“Paris syndrome” is a well-known phenomenon. As is commonly reported - often on a rather

anectodical tone and in a perhaps exaggerated way – a small number of the tourists who visit
Paris, particularly from Japan or China, are so underwhelmed by the reality of the city
compared to the expectations they had formed through romanticized depictions of it, that they
start exhibiting symptoms ranging from hallucinations to depersonalization1.
In literature, music, paintings or films, Paris has long been portrayed as a kind
of artistic and romantic wonderland, in great contrast to its reality as a metropolis where
millions of commuters crowd in everyday, where pigeons proliferate, traffic is incessant,
canine dejections sometimes litter the streets, and where in addition to the Eiffel Tower and
the Louvre one may find the so-called “Crack Hill” 2. Among these countless depictions, this
essay will focus on Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s cult 2001 film Amélie (titled Le Fabuleux Destin
d’Amélie Poulain in the original French). Set almost entirely within the famed northern
Parisian neighbourhood of Montmartre, it takes place in August and September of 1997 and
centres on the title character, an imaginative, lonely young woman who finds contentment in
the small pleasures of life and works as a waitress in a typical café frequented by eccentric
characters. She spends her time acting as kind of guardian angel, elaborating schemes to
secretly help those around her, until she realizes she has neglected her own happiness – the
film then revolves around the cat-and-mouse love story between her and a mysterious young
man who spends his time collecting discarded passport photos.
Some have criticized an unrealistic portrayal of
the city that serves as the film’s backdrop – one that is too idealistic, stuck in a glorified past,
stripped of most realistic aspects, or even problematic. This essay will cover that skewed
portrayal and what the reason for it might be, analysing how the characters interact with the
city, how music and cinematography are used to frame it, how Paris has been thought of in
other works, and certain reactions to the film – also considering the timeline of the film’s
release, and the zeitgeist of that time.

In the opening of the film, a six-minute sequence summarizes the upbringing of Amélie up
until the present, from the moment of her conception (the precise hour, minute and second of
which is mentioned by the off-camera narrator in the opening line of the film – in the 20
seconds that follow, we can already see a panorama featuring the Eiffel tower, and a view of
the Sacré-Cœur) to her life as a 24 year-old. Amélie grows up not in Paris, but in Eaubonne, a
1
Wyatt, Caroline. “’Paris Syndrome’ strikes Japanese” BBC News. December 20, 2006.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6197921.stm
2
Vasina, James. “'Crack Hill' casts shadow over north Paris neighbourhood” France 24. July 5, 2019.
https://france24.com/en/20190705-focus-paris-crack-cocaine-hill-dealers-drug-addicts-users-residents-police-porte-chapelle
 2

small suburb 12 km to the north, and early on, the city indirectly has a profound impact on her
upbringing, as when she is aged 6, her mother is inadvertently killed by a suicidal tourist who
jumps off one of the towers of Notre-Dame. Thus, this short sequence establishes the
geographical setting very clearly by featuring, in rapid succession, three of the city’s most
iconic monuments, though one of them is used to introduce an element of unexpected dark
humour that clashes with the tone of the remainder of the film.
We are also immediately introduced to the film’s
cinematographic style, which serves as the visual basis for its particular portrayal of Paris. It
is quite obvious, even to a casual viewer, that the colour and lighting are unusual for its early
2000’s release – it was filmed on 35mm film and digitally enhanced 3, resulting in vivid,
pastel, dream-like colours with a sort of golden hue. The average viewer can expectedly
already be drawn in by this eye candy, and cannot help but admire the (exaggerated) beauty of
the city. This is exacerbated by the César-winning and commercially successful soundtrack
composed by Yann Tiersen – throughout the film, it infuses a romantic musical idea of
frenchness (or perhaps just parisianness), driven almost entirely by a piano and, quite
stereotypically, an accordion. Amélie lives on her own, in a
small Montmartre apartment, with neighbours that include an elderly, reclusive man who
spends his time painting the same Renoir piece again and again (thus, a work of
impressionism – which has a certain symbolic significance, as I will later discuss), and a
concierge who still laments the loss of her husband decades prior. Amélie’s job as a waitress
in a small café can already raise an interrogation – how, with that salary alone, can she afford
to live by herself in one of the most touristic neighbourhoods of a city known for its high cost
of living? At no point in the film is Amélie shown to be financially struggling, and at no point
is the question of class and economic inequalities addressed (save, perhaps, for the brief and
wordless appearance of a blind beggar, whose sole purpose seems to be to give an old-timey
musical ambience to a metro platform with his record player, and later to serve as an excuse
for the presence in the film of a kind of “the authentic and picturesque sights, smells and
sounds of Montmartre” sequence as Amélie helps him cross the street) – despite the fact that
some of the highest rates of poverty in Paris are found in the 18 th arrondissement, where
Montmartre is located4.

3
Ezra, 301.
4
Observatoire des Inégalités, Les communes les plus touchées par la pauvreté (January 21, 2021),
https://www.inegalites.fr/Les-communes-les-plus-touchees-par-la-pauvrete-2086
 3

Beyond the question of the complete absence in Amélie of a reflection of the ugly sides of
contemporary Paris, the deliberate choices made by cowriters Jean-Pierre Jeunet and
Guillaume Laurant in representing it as an urban backdrop also clearly contribute to an
idealized vision – any Parisian, or simply anyone familiar with the city, will notice aspects of
the film that seem incoherent when compared to the reality of Paris. The world of Amélie
seems to be blessed with perfect weather – in consistence with the nostalgic, golden colour
filters, Paris appears pleasantly sunny and cloudless through the entirety of the movie (fig. 1),
save for a single minute where rain is pouring without much affecting the charm of a typical
cobblestoned Montmartre street (fig. 2). Of course, real-life Paris, like any European city of

its latitude, lacks this kind of constant picture-perfect weather, instead featuring under-
average sunshine and unusually frequent rainfall5.

Fig. 1. Nino Quincampoix (played by Mathieu Kassovitz) in front of the Sacré-Cœur under sunny, cloudless
skies. Still from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain, Claudie Ossard Productions, 2001.

Fig. 2. A brief moment of rain in a typical Montmartre street. Still from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Le Fabuleux Destin
d’Amélie Poulain, Claudie Ossard Productions, 2001.

Amélie, on several occasions, also features the Paris Metro – undeniably a crucial part of the
urban fabric with its 16 lines and 308 stations – in a way that is highly nit-picked, focusing
largely on the photogenic aerial portion which only makes up a small portion of its network,
and the station Abbesses, known for its preserved original art nouveau entrance, just across

5
Météo Paris, Climat de Paris et Île-de-France, https://www.meteo-paris.com/ile-de-france/climat.html
 4

from the famous Mur des Je t’aime. We are not shown overcrowded platforms at rush hour,
graffitied trains, metros cancelled due to strikes, or the busy and nightmarishly labyrinthian
hallways of the mega-station Châtelet.
Like the metro, the streets of Amélie’s Paris seem untypically quiet – in outside scenes,
we are mostly shown pedestrian streets of Montmartre where locals peacefully go about their
day. Needless to say, this seems like a narrow view of a city that packs over 2 million
inhabitants into its 105 square kilometres6 - many more when counting the daytime
commuters from outside of Paris - and features many large boulevards that facilitate a heavy
flow of cars, as well as the infamously imposing traffic on the twelve-lane Place de l’Étoile
roundabout that surrounds the Arc de Triomphe7. And when watching one of the scenes that
take place in the grand halls of the Gare du Nord and Gare de l’Est, a spectator not familiar
with those stations could never imagine they are frequented by a combined 286 million
passengers each year8 - real-life Paris is a live, bustling metropolis, making its quiet, village-
like depiction in Amélie seem narrowly focused, if not dishonest.
The choice of characters, too, is a factor in the construction of this unrealistic,
unlifelike version of Paris. Rather than choosing to reflect the city’s authentic social makeup –
blue- and white-collar workers, students, teachers, public servants, etc. (and even though – to
pick up on my previous statistical argument – despite ongoing gentrification, the 18th
arrondissement still has one of the highest proportions of working-class residents in Paris9),
Jeunet and Laurant resort to the use of “stock characters”, who are typical of 1930s French
films and derive from cultural stereotypes10, such as the jolly grocer (with a pencil
permanently perched atop his ear) and his discreet but kind-hearted assistant, the reclusive
painter, and the failed writer who spends his days at the café, lamenting his own fate.
The Paris constructed by Jeunet is thus one of fantasy, where practically all the
negative sides that are indissociable from the real city are bypassed. The camera points solely
at a colourful neighbourhood on the hill that dominates Paris, focusing on a handful of
characters typical of old films, with an almost complete absence of dirty streets, overcrowded
6
French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, Populations légales 2019 (December 29, 2021),
https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/6005800?geo=COM-75056
7
Compagnon, Sébastien, and Victor Alexandre. “Paris : près de 110000 véhicules transitent chaque jour par le rond-point de
la place de l’Étoile” Le Parisien. May 21, 2022. https://www.leparisien.fr/paris-75/paris-pres-de-110000-vehicules-transitent-
chaque-jour-par-le-rond-point-de-la-place-de-letoile-21-05-2022-PAGYJ2QTNJEC5AI5KYFVQ7ZDKU.php
8
Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français. Fréquentation en gares (2021),
https://ressources.data.sncf.com/explore/dataset/frequentation-gares/
9
Barry, Laurent. “Le nez dans le ruisseau. Le vote aux législatives de 2017 comme écho à la gentrification de nos cités”
(October 2017).
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320258571_Le_nez_dans_le_ruisseau_Le_vote_aux_legislatives_de_2017_comme
_echo_a_la_gentrification_de_nos_cites
10
Oscherwitz, 507.
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commuter trains, struggling workers, and even minorities. The film’s full title is thus quite
accurate; the adjective fabulous originally refers to fables, which are, by definition, fictional –
Amélie’s destiny is fictional, just like its setting, a Paris that is embellished (and even
arguably whitewashed), fabricated, and distorts the urban reality.

To better grasp Amélie’s significance in the establishment of Paris’ image in the cinematic
canon, I will now turn to a work that is of great interest in its comparison to Amélie: the 1995
film La Haine. Also set in Paris (though primarily in one of its suburbs) and taking place in
1993 – four years earlier – it centres on a trio of youths from the banlieue, the suburbs of
Paris known for their large-scale housing projects typically inhabited by low-income
populations, many of whom are of immigrant background, and stereotypically associated with
criminal activity. La Haine and Amélie can, in many ways, be seen as polar opposites (though
anecdotally, the former was directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, who then played a main
supporting role as Amélie’s mysterious love interest in the latter).
Firstly, La Haine reflects the diversity of modern France through its
protagonists, Vinz, Hubert and Saïd, who are respectively Jewish, Afro-French and North
African Muslim – unlike Amélie, where all named characters with the exception of Lucien
(played by the widely popular Moroccan-French comedian Jamel Debbouze) are white. The
topics of class divide and inequality also permeate the film; when the trio take the train into

central Paris and practically

Fig. 3. A view of Paris from Montmartre, with the Eiffel Tower visible. Still from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Le
Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain, Claudie Ossard Productions, 2001.

Fig. 4. A view from a Parisian rooftop, similarly featuring the Eiffel Tower. Still from Mathieu Kassovitz, La
Haine, Les Productions Lazennec, 1995.
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walk the same streets as Amélie, it is clear they are like strangers there – they roam the empty
streets at night, are kicked out of an art exhibit and have a bloody encounter with a group of
skinheads.
The atmospheric difference between the films is also striking (compare fig. 3 and fig.
4) – La Haine is shot entirely in black and white whereas Amélie, as discussed previously,
consciously exhibits an exaggeratedly vibrant colour palette. Furthermore, the celebrated
piano and accordion-driven soundtrack that is indissociable from one contrasts with the near-
absence of music in the other.
Thus, two films portraying the same city, in the same decade, seem
worlds away from each other – between a tragically telling tale of violence, police brutality,
life in the poor, dilapidating suburbs and a romantic story taking place in a practically perfect
dream world, the former seems to be a much more realistic depiction of Paris (especially since
it was originally inspired by real-life riots that followed the death of a Zairian teenager from
the banlieue in police custody two years prior11), as well as a considerably more grim one.
The two films serve two radically different purposes – La Haine, though fictional, attempts to
draw attention to the real-life hardships faced by the marginalized socio-economic-ethnic
minorities in France’s suburbs, while Amélie serves as cinematic candy, entirely avoiding the
grime, the striking injustices and the violence that exist in real-life Paris to instead allow the
spectator to dream and escape to an embellished Paris that existed long ago, or never existed
at all.
The critical reception of Amélie has been remarkably polarized. Some, particularly at the time
of the film’s release, praised it as a beautiful, emotional, heart-warming apolitical film about
hope and universal human capacities12 - this seemed to also be the opinion of most of the
public, as the film was a domestic and international triumph at the box-office, becoming the
highest-grossing film in France that year as well as, to this day, the second most successful
French film worldwide. Others, particularly French critics, decried what I discussed above; a
seemingly nostalgia-driven romanticization of Paris, entirely disconnected from reality, with
some going as far as suggesting the film is a fraud that wallows in the imagined glory of a
Paris that no longer exists, even calling the film nationalist and racist because of the “ethnic
homogeneity” it presents13.

11
Re, Matteo, and Léna Georgeault, “La banlieue y el proceso de radicalización colectiva en Francia: análisis de las películas
La Haine y Les Misérables”. Araucaria (Triana) 24, no. 50 (2022): 309–331.
12
van der Pol, 257-258.
13
Oscherwitz, 504 ; van der Pol, 258.
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I believe it is necessary, at this point, to consider a slice the French zeitgeist at the turn of the
millennium. In 1998, a year after Amélie takes place and three years before its release, France,
for the first time, won the FIFA World Cup – with a team that was ethnically highly diverse.
The national outpouring of joy that followed was marked by a slogan, quickly popularized by
the media: “black, blanc, beur” (“black, white, North African” – a play on France’s national
colours of bleu, blanc, rouge), which referred to a certain feeling of triumphant national unity
and fraternity in a modern, ethnically diverse France that was symbolised by the makeup of its
champion team14 - though that was not the first time a true face had been given to black,
blanc, beur, as La Haine had already come out three years prior.
The motto and what it symbolised, an impression of a new wind of peace in a
France that looks beyond skin colour, was, though, to be short-lived. On April 21, 2002,
almost exactly a year after Amélie’s release, France let out a collective gasp of astonishment
seeing the results of the first round of the Presidential election – tailing incumbent President
Chirac in the lead was not the socialist Lionel Jospin, as was almost universally expected, but
Jean-Marie Le Pen of the far-right Front National, a man who prior to 1998 had called the
national team “a symbol of the decay of the true France” 15, was known for his inappropriate
and even semi-negationist comments on Nazi gas chambers and crematory ovens 16, and whose
party counted a former member of the Waffen-SS among its cofounders 17. Thus, the release
of Amélie intervened during a period that in the course of a few years, saw both the hopeful
celebration of France’s ethnic diversity gaining over the national spirit, and the notedly anti-
immigration far-right come closer to the gates of power than at any time since 1945. This
context can serve to explain why, faced with the predominant whiteness of Amélie’s cast,
some particularly vitriolic critics went as far as accusing the film of having a “foul”,
“passéist” and “postcard” vision of Paris that is a form of “latent lepenism” and “thinly veiled
racism”18. Contrarily, as is argued by Oscherwitz19,
the reason for the absence of any truly realistic representation of the urban space in Amélie
might not be a desire by Jeunet to return to the Paris that existed in a nostalgized past, as some

14
Kassimeris, Christos. “Black, Blanc and Beur: French Football's ‘Foreign Legion’”. Journal of Intercultural Studies 31, no.
1 (2011): 15-29, DOI: 10.1080/07256868.2010.523142.
15
Ibid.
16
Chrisafis, Angélique. ”Jean-Marie Le Pen fined again for dismissing Holocaust as 'detail'” The Guardian. April 6, 2016.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/06/jean-marie-le-pen-fined-again-dismissing-holocaust-detail
17
Lebourg, Nicolas. “50 ans du FN-RN : l’histoire secrète du Waffen-SS qui déposa les premiers statuts du parti” Mediapart.
October 5, 2022. https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/politique/051022/50-ans-du-fn-rn-l-histoire-secrete-du-waffen-ss-qui-
deposa-les-premiers-statuts-du-parti
18
Kaganski, Serge. “«Amélie» pas jolie” Libération. May 31, 2001. https://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/index2.php?url=http
%3A%2F%2Fwww.liberation.fr%2Ftribune%2F0101375722-amelie-pas-jolie#federation=archive.wikiwix.com&tab=url
19
Oscherwitz, 505-512.
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critics perceived it, but rather the opposite – Jeunet imagines a Paris that not only does not
exist, but never existed. Amélie makes constant stylistic nods to the ”golden age” of French
cinema, such as the 1930s-1940s films of René Clair, Sacha Guitry or Marcel Carné, and
nouvelle vague works by François Truffaut20 – as well as to paintings of the impressionist
movement (most prominently Renoir’s Le Déjeuner des Canotiers, which appears throughout
the film), which by definition was rooted in subjective impression rather than realism.
Amélie’s Paris pops into existence at the start of the movie and disappears at its end – it is a
Parisian utopia that exists outside space and time, despite the narrator telling us of its location
and chronology with millimetric precision. The setting is not a moving picture of the real city
of Paris, France in 1997, but rather a blank canvas on which Jeunet has spliced together bits
and bobs cut here and there from pictures of an already fictionalized Paris portrayed in movies
from an array of directors and decades.

In conclusion – Paris, as an iconic, universally known city, has been portrayed countless times
in a myriad of films of just as many genres that form a kind of spectre, towards either ends of
which one may respectively find La Haine and Amélie. The latter does not seem to hide its
(over-)romanticization of the city which, through the film’s resounding popularity, has
probably inadvertently fooled many understandably charmed future tourists into forming the
wrong image of Paris – one of a romantic city frozen in time, where accordion music oozes
through clean, perfumed cobblestoned streets navigated by local (mostly white) characters
and from which pollution, rude Parisians, poverty, packed metros, dirty streets and other
unromantic aspects are mostly absent. This distorted vision is exacerbated by the artistic
choices made by Jeunet – saturated colours, sunny skies, curated soundtrack, famous
monuments, etc. Some have interpreted this as a dishonest misrepresentation fuelled by
excessive nostalgia that is, to some extent, problematic in its apparent erasing of certain social
classes and minorities – especially considering the growth of the far-right in France at that
time. The truth might be more innocent – showing the real and
tragic injustices and inequalities of Paris is a role fulfilled by movies like La Haine, and
showing what Paris actually looks like at a given time is what a documentary does. Amélie,
meanwhile, bases its fantasy of Paris on representations already made in French cinema,
photography, and paintings of decades past, forming a kind of meta-fictional city that in no
way pretends to reflect reality, but rather serves to put sparkles in the eyes and warmth in the

20
Ibid, 505-506.
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heart of the spectator – even though the quasi-absence of non-white, non-French characters in
a film set in multicultural Montmartre might still justifiably raise some eyebrows.
Thus, although Amélie’s success coupled
to its skewed portrayal of Paris might have had a noticeable impact on how the city is
perceived in collective imagination, Jeunet’s intention in making the film might have simply
been to develop an awe-inspiring story with a nice background, all while paying homage to
classical French cinema.

Bibliography

Ezra, Elizabeth. “The Death of an Icon: Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain”. French
Cultural Studies, Vol. 15, Issue 3 (October 2004): 301-310.

Holm, Jennifer L. “Consuming Nostalgia in "Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain"”. The
French Review, Vol. 89, No. 1 (October 2015): 69-81

Jeunet, Jean-Pierre, director. Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain. Claudie Ossard

Productions and UGC, 2001. 2 hr., 3 min.

Kassovitz, Mathieu, director. La Haine. Les Productions Lazennec, 1995. 1 hr., 38 min.
 10

Oscherwitz, Dayna. “Once Upon a Time that Never Was: Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "Le Fabuleux
Destin d'Amélie Poulain" (2001)”. The French Review, Vol. 84, No. 3 (February
2011): 504-515.

Phillips, Alistair, and Ginette Vincendeau. Paris in the Cinema : Beyond the Flâneur.
London: British Film Institute, 2018.

van der Pol, Gerwin. “The Fabulous Destination of a Cultural Tourist in Paris: Games of
Make-Believe in Amélie (2001)”. Review of Film and Television Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2
(November 2004): 257-266.