Amelie - Intercultural Film Review

Amelie is a French movie about a young twenty something girl who’s world opened up to her when her mother dies and she is allowed to venture out. After a health misdiagnoses at a young child Amelie is stranded in her home away from all people and relationships until her mother passes away and she finds herself free. She becomes a waitress and decides to help all the people around her until one day she herself finds love.
This film shows a French cultural pattern where the people are open minded, whimsical, unique, and quirky. The main character Amelie, wants to get the most out of her life. She takes the viewer on a path through a series of subplots where she is trying to help people that surround her find happiness and joy. Paris and the people of France are shown in a whimsical and fairytale environment. All the while, Amelie, is removed from all human contact which makes for an interesting film if one is attempting to view this film through the lens of interpersonal communication.
All the communicating in the movie is done through the use of metaphors, scheme, plots, tricks, and the like. It’s interesting because Amelie doesn’t directly communicate with people even though she is not anti-social. She is very social and likes to help people but she does so almost exclusively nonverbally. One exception to this is when Amelie helps a blind man to cross a busy street and, opposite to her normally silent nonverbal character, she proceeds to very quickly describe everything that she sees and everything that is happening to the blind man in exceptional detail. This is done as an act of kindness for someone who can’t see and not as a form of actual or real communication.
All real communication in this movie, is done in a childlike fashion of cat and mouse. It feels almost like interpersonal communication in this movie is a game that is not to be taken seriously. When Amelie finds a boy that she is romantically interested in, she finds herself needing to