Amelie / Delicatessen

WHAT: A discussion of the following two Jean-Pierre Jeunet films: Amelie and Delicatessen.

WHEN: Saturday May 12th, 2012 at 5:00 PM

WHERE: McKibbin’s Irish Pub - 1426 Bishop St.

Amelie

Info: 2001. France. 122 min.

Starring: Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz.

Story: Amélie is a story about a girl named Amélie whose childhood was suppressed by her Father’s mistaken concerns of a heart defect. With these concerns Amélie gets hardly any real life contact with other people. This leads Amélie to resort to her own fantastical world and dreams of love and beauty. She later on becomes a young woman and moves to the central part of Paris as a waitress. After finding a lost treasure belonging to the former occupant of her apartment, she decides to return it to him. After seeing his reaction and his new found perspective – she decides to devote her life to the people around her. Such as, her father who is obsessed with his garden-gnome, a failed writer, a hypochondriac, a man who stalks his ex girlfriends, the “ghost”, a suppressed young soul, the love of her life and a man whose bones are as brittle as glass. But after consuming herself with these escapades… (from IMDb)

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sECzJY07oK4

Delicatessen

Info: 1991. France. 99 min.

Directed By: Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

Starring: Dominique Pinon, Marie-Laure Dougnac, Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Karin Viard.

Story: The story is centered on a microcosm of a post-apocalyptic society where food is so rare it’s invaluable and is used as currency. The story centers on an apartment building with a delicatessen on the ground floor. The owner of the eatery also owns the apartment building and he is in need of a new maintenance man since the original “mysteriously” disappeared. A former clown applies for the job and the butcher’s intent is to have him work for a little while and then serve him to quirky tenants who pay the butcher in, of course, grain. The clown and butcher’s daughter fall in love and she tries to foil her father’s plans by contacting the “troglodytes”, a grain eating sub-group of society who live entirely underground. The “trogs” are possibly the most sensible of the lot, as they see food as food and not money. (from IMDb)

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qtgw38Yq2Qs