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Jeunet, whose previous film was the Hollywood Alien Resurrection, was eager to make a picture back home. "I love L.A.," he says, "but it's a place, it's not a city. I wanted to move to Montmartre, to live in Paris." Amelie was to be played by Emily Watson, but when she bowed out, the first actress he tested was Tautou. "And I thought, Is it real? No, I saw the test on video. She's perfect. Each day during the shoot, I said, 'You're perfect. Do exactly like in the test.'"
Amelie is the sort of lonely, lovely girl the young Audrey Hepburn played. Tautou, though she lacks Hepburn's petrifying beauty, is worth comparing to the Audrey. Her tight, seraphic smile holds a universe of promise and mystery; and in the right light, she's adorable. From her first prominent role, as a pig-tailed salon assistant in Tonie Marshall's 1999 Venus Beauty Institute, Tautou has been France's Star of Tomorrow du jour.
Now audiences have fallen in love with Amelie-Audrey, a fusion of the actress and her character. "Unfortunately," she says, "I'm not like her. I had a happy childhood. I have less imagination, and I'm more timid. When someone sees me, I don't want him to meet me. I wish I could be enchanted by this." Tautou, now shooting her first English-language film, Dirty Pretty Things, for Stephen Frears, will have to settle for being an enchantress.
Jeunet's Amelie will hope to do the same: open your eyes. Look around, the film says, and not just at the usual exhibitionists. There's magic and heartbreak in the shiest creature. Finally, with her lover's sleeping head in her arms, Amelie realizes she has someone else to love: herself. And that is her fabulous destiny.
--With reporting by Jess Cagle/Los Angeles