Fall classics: directors offer cheeky takes on classic genres: romantic comedy and film noir

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 19, 2001 | by Rex Roberts

Every few years, a movie comes along that is so fresh and genuine it rehabilitates the old cliches -- heartwarming, exuberant, winsome -- and restores the jaded soul. Voila Amelie, the romantic comedy by French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet that manages to be both blithe and beatific.

Amelie is a young woman who, shy and lonely, determines to bring joy to others equally despondent. Her fanciful imagination compels her to concoct elaborate schemes toward this end, even as she longs for love herself. Alas, she is unable to confront her own object of desire, a young man who, like her, prefers sentimental dreams to disappointing reality.

If the story seems ordinary, Amelie is anything but. Jeunet, whose previous pictures include The Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children and Alien Resurrection, is one of the most original filmmakers working, certainly one of the most visually inventive. A fan of comics and cartoons, he began his career in animation and his movies, with their elaborate sets, digital hijinks and distinct camerawork, are spectacular to behold. Clouds in the sky form images, statues wink, photographs talk. More than most directors, however, Jeunet uses special effects to further his narrative -- his visual puns and surprises reflect the emotions of his characters, or they comment wryly on the action. When Amelie is overcome with heartache, she literally melts into a pool of tears.

Beyond the graphic sleight of hand, the film is gorgeous to watch. Shot on location in Paris, mostly in Montmartre, Amelie is an homage to French cinema, Impressionist painting and the city itself, with its inviting cafes, street markets and art-nouveau metro stations. "I wanted Paris to be there, at the heart of the picture" Jeunet has said. It is, along with his adorable leading actress, Audrey Tautou.

It's hard to imagine Amelie without Tautou, whose big eyes, pouty lips, slender neck and bobbed hair recall another (until now incomparable) Audrey. The 23-year-old Tautou stole the show in her supporting role in Tonie Marshall's 1999 Venus Beaute (Institut), for which she won a Cesar for most promising young actress. Her new role has garnered her still more acclaim--Amelie broke box-office records when it opened in France earlier this year.

Notwithstanding the charming performances by Tautou and the cast in general, it is Jeunet and his cowriter, Guillaume Laurant, who get final credit for having crafted a thoroughly amusing entertainment that transcends its genre. Amelie is in many ways a classic romantic comedy, but the wit with which the writers have woven together the subplots, all illustrating the timeless truths of hope, faith and charity, is rare in cinema.

Amore brooding flick, awash in angst, irony and ire, is The Man Who Wasn't There, new from Joel and Ethan Coen. Like Jeunet, the Coens have a distinctive style, although one that reinvents itself with each project. Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski and O Brother, Where Art Thou? may share certain themes and preoccupations -- in particular, a self-consciousness about the process of making and watching movies -- but each is unique, a tribute to the brothers' remarkable talent and creativity.

The Man Who Wasn't There tells the story of Ed Crane, an ordinary barber in a small city in Northern California in the late 1940s. Crane is vaguely dissatisfied with his life, but he doesn't know how to change it-- until a huckster stops in one afternoon for a haircut and explains his scheme to open a dry-cleaning store. Crane decides he wants in, but to raise his $10,000 stake he must blackmail his friend Big Dave, whom he suspects is having an affair with his wife, Doris. Of course, the whole business backfires, initiating a chain of events that grows more and more bizarre.

The Coens' movie, again like Jeunet's, is an homage, in this case to James M. Cain, author of noir classics such as Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. "Cain's stories nearly always had as their heroes schlubs -- losers, guys who were involved in rather dreary and banal existences -- as protagonists," Ethan Coen has pointed out. Crane, played with superb lack of affect by Billy Bob Thornton, is unable to explain the tragic events he himself has initiated, although he spends most of the movie musing (in voice-over) about the meaning of life. Indeed, his inarticulate existentialism is central to the film's running gag about the plight of modern man as defined in mid-century America, with its A-bomb scares, flying-saucer sightings and growing materialism.

As might be expected of the Coens, the movie eventually folds back into itself, this time to the detriment of the story. But the cast (including Frances McDormand as Doris and James Gandolfini as Big Dave) is well worth watching, as is the black-and-white cinematography. The Man Who Wasn't There is a film buff's flick, full of black humor, parlor philosophy and cinema aesthetics; but it doesn't take itself too seriously, which may be the fate of film noir for the near future -- until, at least, the world acclimates to real terror.