French Kissed

JEAN-PIERRE JEUNET'S DREAMYAMÉLIE

Amelie, a sprightly French comedy that swept Paris off its feet this spring, opens with the most affecting homage to childhood in recent memory. With a brief montage of a girl at play, director Jean-Pierre Jeunet instantly transports the viewer to a time when the simplest things—a coin, a spiral of paper, five red raspberries— recommended themselves as toys. Point taken: when wedded to human imagination, every object possesses magic. Audrey Tautou, in a role that invites comparisons to another Audrey, plays a gamine bent on harnessing that power for good works. She reunites an aging loner with a treasure box he'd left behind in boyhood. She enlists a garden gnome to awaken her father's sense of adventure. Soon she bewitches a young man by revealing herself only through partial photographs, phone calls, and street art. Will she forever hide from intimacy behind her signs and symbols? Jeunet's fastidiousness directs wonder to every corner of the screen, suggesting it's appropriate to be smitten with the world at large, and with every decent-hearted person in it. He and Tautou have done for Paris what Hepburn and Peck once did for Rome. (Rating: ★★★⅛)

CHRIS MITCHELL