Enfin, le Printemps (Finally, Spring)
To celebrate the vernal equinox and thaw hearts frozen by winter and two years of pandemic, I introduce my tween to a favourite director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet. It’s the final day of March Break from school so we set aside some family movie time and select a cinematic jewel: Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain, better known this side of the pond as Amélie, starring the fabulous Audrey Tautou.
It’s not that we haven’t watched foreign films together before. An avid illustrator, my kid loves to draw kaiju and has stomped their way through each of the original Gojira (Godzilla) films from the Showa era in Japan (1954 through 1975). I advise them the best way to view a foreign film is in its original language using subtitles versus viewing one that’s been ruined by voice-over.
They are still a month away from entering teenhood so I cover their eyes during small moments in the film. They blush and giggle. I realize they’ve a possible sense of what’s unfolding in censored scenes, but am pretty sure neither of us are quite ready for that full-on, parent-teen discussion yet! Thankfully such moments of digital obscurity remain brief.
What a thing to share a much-loved film with my tween and recognize the moments we fawn over are near identical. They are thoroughly enchanted by the gnome’s globe-trotting adventures. When the older man recovers the tin box containing his lost, childhood treasures, our mutual emotion is palpable. Our eyes widen with Amélie’s and Nino’s as they each revel in resolving the mystery of Photo Booth Man.
We leap with the horse in rapture over the fence to gallop alongside cyclists in hot pursuit of the Tour de France prize. We guffaw over the inventive pranks Amélie devises to avenge the ceaseless bullying by the grocer upon Lucien, his hired hand. When Amélie and Nino finally meet face-to-face and kiss, my vision blurs. I turn from the screen to gaze at my child whose eyes, like my own, brim with tears.
In the days that follow the screening, we broach the jealousy of café regular, Joseph, played by the brilliant Dominique Pinon. Pinon is always stellar in every role he performs. We unpack how abhorrent and misogynist Joseph’s increasing harassment becomes. Why it ultimately aborts his attempts to foster intimacy and successfully establish more enduring relationship. Two yeas into pandemic, we relate far too well to the loneliness of Amélie, her downstairs neighbour Amandine, her widower father, as well as Raymond Dufayel, a.k.a. The Glass Man. The discussions that unfold between Amélie and Raymond only pretend to concern the people depicted in Renoir’s famous 1881 painting, Luncheon of the Boating Party. In reality, the theories they share belie their own hearts and lives. Their growing bond rescues each of them from their formerly isolated states.
We admire how Jeunet makes vivid Amélie’s rich imagination. Her reveries float by like the animal cloud formations she pictures through her childhood camera. Framed paintings and a bedroom lamp come alive as she slumbers. She imagines herself a much braver Zorro, determined to return Nino’s photo album at the Sacred Heart Basilica (Sacré-Coeur) in Montmartre. Her appearance in vintage reportage and film noir scenes on her television screen grant further insight to the human she’d prefer to be. By the time her final daydream unfolds as she washes dishes in her kitchen, we break from the comfort of fantasy to the harshness of reality along with her.
It’s the moment when her make-believe merges with the very real sound of a beaded curtain disturbed. She’s forced to face that the rustling of beads is not effected via the loving stroke of Nino’s fingers, but instead by her cat walking through them. This climactic moment opens a flood of tears and regret within her. And it simultaneously pulls a finger from the dam within ourselves. We weep with her.
Amélie effortlessly orchestrates the lives of others. Yet fear and self-doubt prevent her from altering her own until the romantic climax in her apartment. When I first saw the film, I remember the audible gasp from my mouth when she grabs Nino’s jacket (and finally her courage) rather than choose to reject him. In the act of tugging Nino into her apartment, she pulls love into her life. She kicks the apartment door closed and her heart open wide. How vital that decision to leap, to embrace risk for love’s sake rather than dwell only in dreams and dwindle in despair.
As a photographer, Jeunet’s use of photography in the film is cinematic magic. At the heart of Nino’s collection of torn pieces of rejected photo booth pictures is a deep longing to document and repair. And maybe it’s a form of self-care? Are these discarded fragments glued back together like puzzle pieces within Nino’s album the visualization of a deeper longing for connectedness within him? The polaroids of the gnome in familiar tourist spots around the globe mailed to Amélie’s father ultimately encourage him to broaden his own horizons. Beside Nino’s bed, four photo booth images of a stranger animate and debate Amélie’s possible love for the young collector. Fanciful film credits are a signature of Jeunet films. Jeunet’s reconstruction of torn photo booth pictures for end credits make us all whole. Je l’aime.
The film rockets to its end as Nino and Amélie race via moped through the streets of Montmartre, the 18th arrondissement of Paris where the film is set. As I close my laptop, my child and I digest all the celluloid wonder in silence. The film awakens a memory for me. I unfold it like the beeswax wrap I use for my child’s lunchbox. The recollection drips from my hippocampus like honey. It even carries a sweet scent. My child listens, their mouth slightly agape, as I describe my first motorcycle ride in France. I am close to Amélie’s age in the film in this story. I tell my child I even dress like her back then: vintage cardigans, frocks and doc marten boots. During my first and only visit to France, I wear a felt, purple hat. Its brim sports a cut-out design through which I stick the stems of fresh roses.
When I visit France in 1990, years before the film is made, everyone smokes. I confess my non-smoking naïveté leads me to purchase Gauloises cigarettes which have no filter and prove far too potent. My attempt to blend into mon environnement is made more awkward by ceaseless coughing. The apartment I inhabit belongs to a French exchange student I befriended in Canada the year before. Upon my arrival, she announces she must leave abruptly. She and her spouse are both Air France pilots. Their on-call status means they’ve regrettably been called away to a sudden flight. They offer me their apartment key with profuse apologies and my stay ends up entirely solo. For two weeks, I wander the streets of Paris en seule. Behind the apartment is a children’s school where each morning un groupe d’enfants flocks to the fence as I pass to shout intrusive questions at me; questions only the guileless young, blissfully unaware of social etiquette or their own presumption, could dare recite so freely:
“Quel âge as-tu?” (How old are you?)
My finger wags. “Plus vieux que toi!” (Older than you!)
Es-tu marié?” (Are you married?)
“As-tu des enfants?” (Do you have children?)
“Non et non, mes petits amis,” I laugh in carefree, brazen response.
One morning, I exit a bank after exchanging American dollars into French francs. Outside the door, a handsome young man waits in jeans and the weathered leather of a pilot jacket the colour of wet sand against the white foam of a shearling lining. He evokes for me a young James Dean as he leans against a motorcycle seat, a smoke suspended between his full, French lips.
I make a shoddy attempt en Français to ask if I may photograph him. His expression becomes more confused. I stop speaking and point first to the small film camera that hangs around my neck and then at him. He laughs and with a nod, graciously smiles for me. At the time, I am not well versed at film photography though at least I’ve had the good sense to purchase a black and white roll. In one brief moment, the shutter clicks and so do we. There’s no time to wait for that film to develop. I cannot miss my train. So I turn and begin a thirty-minute walk on foot to the station en route to Paris for the day.
Five minutes into my stroll, the motorcycle zooms by. There’s another girl my age, his age — his lover most likely — snuggled closely behind him. Ten minutes later, back comes the bike this time with one rider. We exchange smiles again as he passes and I hear the tires slow as they make a U-turn behind me. This prompts me to halt my steps and rotate my gaze to watch him pull up alongside me. More smiles. Laughter. “À la gare?” he asks. “Oui,” I beam. He makes an adorable attempt at an American accent. “Gum on,” he beckons, his right hand extended in invitation. Who could resist? I climb behind him.
My arms wrap against the warmth of his waist. Neither of us dons a helmet. It’s perfectly legal in France to smash our unencumbered skulls against the ground should the cycle swerve. But we do not meet the danger with which we flirt. Instead, I hang onto my purple hat. One of its roses showers pink petals upon the blur of road beneath as though they burst straight from my heart. We arrive at the station where I disembark. Only then do I ask him his name. His eyelashes are the length of the Champs-Élysées. “Philippe,” he murmurs. I plant a kiss, swift and soft, upon his cheek by way of thanks. Merci.
As my story closes, the look on my child’s face echoes the expression of the man rediscovering his tin box: pure amazement and wonder. Wheels grind furiously behind their eyes as they try to imagine their mom in a hat strewn with roses, young and laughing on the back of a motorcycle with a stranger she’s just met. They aren’t the only one struggling to picture the scene. Was I ever so young, wild and free? I know that same jeune fille lives somewhere still inside me.
When I pick my kid up from school mid-week, they remark how much they loved how Jeunet introduces characters via individual likes and dislikes. I ask them to share their own with me. We make a running tally together.
Their dislikes:
- dead insects on a windowsill
- the rubber-like texture of high-gloss paper used in encyclopedias
- stepping on LEGO in the dark en route to the bathroom
Their likes:
- removing snow pants the moment they get home
- sharpening and organizing their vast array of pencil crayons
- the cloistered comfort of a car wash
My dislikes:
- the high piercing sound the filtered water tap emits at my parents’ home
- talking on the telephone
- when clouds obscure the moon and stars
My likes:
- the taste of melting smarties mixed into buttered popcorn
- the muffled moans my dog makes in sleep and the way his paws dance as he dreams he is running
- in winter, the sight of breath made visible and the sound of snow crunching underfoot
Almost a week later, the film continues to linger in our minds and words. Such an unexpected gift to watch my child moved to laughter or tears by the same comic or sacred moments of this much beloved film. As though by studying Jeunet’s celluloid gem, we embody The Glass Man and Amélie who uncover truths about each other in the careful analysis of Renoir’s masterpiece. Like witnessing the cardiac drumbeat clear through my child’s chest. An echo of the exposed radiance that is Amélie’s own throbbing heart when she encounters Nino for a second time. While spring warms the planet, this film defrosts our dormant cores from winter hibernation and the chilly onset of a third year into pandemic. May each our hearts thaw and thump so fervently again.
Edith Piaf sings a song, Enfin, le Printemps. I share some of the lyrics here:
Entend comme ça chahute dans tous les palpitants
L’hiver se tire des flûtes, enfin le printemps
Translated, she sings:
Listen how he heckles
All of those with throbbing hearts
Winter draws straws
At last, spring. . .
