This left me with an interesting read of the French film, Amelie (2001) which I had the pleasure of watching this weekend. I could not help but notice the influences that Freud seemed to have on Jean- Pierre Jeunet in his creation of this particular film. The story plays out as though it was meant to be directly attributed to the analysis of Freud, with the exception of the fact that it follows the life of a young girl rather than a boy, which would have applied to his work more directly.
The story opens with the supremely clinical description of how Amelie came to be, displaying a montage of images: sperm racing towards an egg, the maturity and growth of a pregnant woman, and finally a the head of a child emerging in childbirth. This is very realist beginning for a girl who will later live a life full of purely Gothic moments. There is then a home video- like reel, where we are given a quick overview of Amelie's happy, curious childhood, before her parents are introduced to us.
Freud bases much of his analysis on the relationships within a family, particularly focusing on the interactions between child and parent. The narrator continues Amelie's tale by describing the personalities of her father and mother, while they are displayed on screen (pointed comments are also written out describing certain attributes.)
We are first told about her father, "an ex-army doctor," is presented in his lab coat, standing stiffly in front of the spa where he now works. An arrow pointing at his mouth leads to script explaining: "Tight lips, hard heart." Her mother, a school teacher, also stands in front of her work, she is given the description, "Facial twitch, weak nerves."
This film -as is the case with many Gothic texts, in my opinion- is a comedy. The moments of her childhood that are most important for future character development are equal parts dark and silly. For instance, when she is six years old and "she'd like to be hugged by her daddy" she is overexcited during the only time he touches her, during her monthly checkup (he does, after all, have a "cold heart"). This is the reason he thinks her heart is irregular as well as the reason she is forced into home school. Blubber, her suicidal fish, and only friend is dropped into a stream, due to her mother's previously mentioned "weak nerves." This loneliness only increases when her mother is actually killed by someone else's suicide.
Left only with her distant father, she grows into identificatory love and has no parent with which to direct an object love, so she just doesn't. This, I am lead to believe, accounts for her disinterest in men and relationships for most of her life.
"She tried once or twice, but the results were a letdown"
Instead, like her father, she distances herself from the world around her, content on observing people and avoiding being the object of observation for others. Her trip into her own unconscious begins when she knocks away a loose tile on her bathroom wall to find a hidden box filled with toys. As she opens this passage way into the dark tunnel of her wall, so opens her own mind.
In her quest for the owner of the small treasure box, she begins to interact with her neighbors as well as people who once lived in the building. The first real connection we see her make is with the old man who tells her the name of who she is searching for. "We all need a way to relax," he says. She responds in a whisper, "I skip stones." In this moment she can see some of herself in this old man and whoever "we all" entails. She makes good deeds a part of her daily life and in doing so she continues to make similar little connections, and also discovers that she too has been observed.
Her mission leads to self realization, largely at the hands of her neighbor, Raymond Dufayel, who helps her to connect with the man with whom she most relates. At her first meeting with Nino Quincompoix the narrator tells us that, "When Amelie lacked playmates, Nino had too many. Five miles apart, they both dreamed of having a brother and sister to be with all the time." Despite their different reasons, the two are connected in their need for and lack of companionship. It is in Nino that Amelie finds her other and can finally step out of the cold shadow cast upon her by her father. She is free to make a loving connection with a man who is nothing like her father.
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