French_Cinema_Essay

French Cinema Essay “Jeunet’s Post-Modern style creates a unique experience for his audience”. Discuss with close reference to Amélie and Delicatessen. Jeunet’s films take the audience on a bizarre ride, to places they have never been. Two of Jeunet’s films, Amélie and Delicatessen are completely different but both create a unique experience for the audience and are, in some ways, distinctively similar. In both Amélie and Delicatessen, Jeunet uses colour, characters and themes to bring the story together and to deliver a production that the audience would never expect. Jeunet uses colour very creatively in his films. Just by adjusting the colouring, he can make the audience see differences in small things and make them sense changes in emotions. In Amélie, Jeunet uses colour change to show when Amélie moves from childhood to adulthood. The colours change from sepia tones to lighter, real colours. This suggests that Amélie is moving from a safe, secure childhood, to the real world that is full of dangers. Jeunet also uses sepia saturation to help convey connotations of the past. The warm colours suggest a nostalgic, safer world. Jeunet also uses sepia saturation in his film Delicatessen, although, this time he uses the sepia saturation to bring about a feeling of loneliness and isolation. This feeling is enhanced by the look of the downtrodden apartment block and its wild-looking inhabitants. Jeunet uses dark colouring to accentuate the dark nature of the film. The dark colourings are used to compliment the characters and the plot. At the end of this film, Jeunet lets the fog and sepia saturation clear away, giving us a glimpse of the bright sky. This symbolises the end of a horrible era, and the beginning of a better world. Jeunet likes to cast characters with unusual and expressive facial features to make his films interesting and unique. Jeunet likes his characters to be diverse and unusual. In Amélie, Amélie herself has unusual personality traits, and unusual facial features which add to her characters innocence. The fact that she looks down the barrel of the camera every so often reminds us that we are, in fact, watching a movie, adding to her characters idiosyncratic nature. In Delicatessen, Louison also has unusual facial features, unusual personality traits and does unusual things, like how he thinks to breaks the pipes in order to save his life. This adds to his characters strange, cartoon-like feel. Jeunet uses his themes effectively in all of his films to create atmosphere and awareness. In both Amélie and Delicatessen, Jeunet uses common themes of love, family relationships and life’s simple pleasures. In Amélie love is explored through Amélie and Nino, and also through Joseph and Gina. Throughout the film, there is constant evidence of one way love, for example when Amélie is obsessed with meeting Nino, and when Gina is getting stalked by Joseph. Jeunet uses this theme to relate all the characters to each other, and to remind us that love is sometimes unwarranted. In Delicatessen, the grotesque and unsophisticated love between Julie and Louison helps offer rationality and optimism in between the many dark and disturbing themes of Delicatessen. Family Relationships are seen as significant and vital to everyone’s lives. In Amélie, Family relationships are explored through Amélie and her father. After Amelie’s mother died, Amelie’s father was even more withdrawn, however, Amélie, on her quest of helping people, decides to help her father out into the world, and once she does, their relationship blossoms. In Delicatessen, family relationships are explored through Julie and her father who are not close, and she starts hate him when he decides to kill her lover. The butcher tries to bring Julie closer to him, with offerings of sweets and other luxuries, however he is intent on killing Louison, and when the butcher is finally killed, the apartment block regains its sense of family. Life’s simple pleasures are something that we forget about today in our fast-tracked lives. In Amélie life’s simple pleasures is explores through the adult Amélie, who has a unique penchant for the simple pleasures in life, and throughout the film you see her indulging in them. For example, when she breaks the crust of crème brulee with the back of a spoon, dips her hand into bagfuls of beans, and compulsively collects stones to skip off the Saint-Martin canal. In Delicatessen, life’s simple pleasures are subtle, but evident. They are shown through the almost normal activities indulged in by the inhabitants of the apartment block. Louison enjoys practicing his magic tricks and Julie enjoys practicing her cello. As you can see, Jeunet is a master of creating atmosphere and excitement through his use of characters, colouring and themes, and his post-modern style creates a unique experience for his audience.