Amélie (2001)

Screenplay Genre: Comedy / Fantasy / Romance

Movie Time: 122 minutes

1. INCITING INCIDENT

AméliePoulain (Audrey Tautou), a young, inhibited dreamer who keeps to herself, lives alone with her cat in Paris. One evening she discovers a loose tile in her bathroom. Hidden behind it is a box of treasures left behind by the previous tenants. Marbles, Tour de France action figures, pictures of sports heroes—it is a young boy’s secret treasure chest. Amélie decides that she will reunite this box with its owner and become a permanent do-gooder if things go well.(00:14:55)

2. LOCK IN (End of Act One)

Amélie returns to her apartment in defeat when she is unable to find the box’s owner, but then she meets her neighbor Raymond Dufayel (Serge Merlin), an old recluse who is a kindred spirit. He gives her the correct name for the man she’s been searching for and his current address. Amélie returns the box of treasures; the man decides that life is fleeting and will reconnect with his family. (00:34:56)

3. FIRST CULMINATION (Midpoint)

While Amélie is doing her good deeds, she discovers Nino Quincampoix (Mathieu Kassovitz) collecting discarded photos in the metro station. He drops a photo album and Amélie picks it up—she is in love. Nino leaves missing posters for his lost album at all the metro stations, but when Amélie calls, she discovers that it is a number for a sex shop called the Porno Palace. She hangs up. Her neighbor Raymond Dufayel tells her that “luck is like the Tour de France, you wait and it flashes past you. You have to catch it while you can.” Amélie takes this advice and bravely goes to find love at the Porno Palace.  (01:08:00)

4. MAIN CULMINATION (End of Act Two)

Amélieschemes to draw Nino into falling in love with her through involved strategies, meddling in her own affairs to affect a positive outcome—just like she has done in her other do-gooder activities—and it works. Nino meets her at the set time and place, the café she works at, but she is too scared to admit her love. Instead, she has a co-worker secretly slip him a note for a future meeting—creating another chance to seal the deal. She is hopeful of the future meeting, but Raymond Dufayel knows that she is just a coward and tells her so. (01:39:45)

5. THIRD ACT TWIST

Nino waits at the metro station Amélie had specified, but again she cannot face him. Nino will not be deterred. He finds her address and knocks at her door, but she can’t answer it. She gets a phone call telling her to go into her bedroom—Raymond Dufayel has left her a video cassette. He tells her to run after love as fast as she can or her heart will grow as old and brittle as his decrepit skeleton. Amélie intrepidly heeds this advice, running into the arms of Nino. And they live happily ever after. (01:51:54)