Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain, better known as Amélie, is Jeunet’s contribution to France’s cinematic history. A critical and popular success, both nationally and internationally, Jeunet expertly employs the idea of the spectacle to provide viewers with opportunities for autonomy, emphasising the role of the audience beyond consumers of media. As a modern homage to French film, Amélie is beautifully crafted-with a deep understanding of our contemporary era and the cultural hegemony of Hollywood-to honour the past cinematic tradition of France without isolating itself from its own context and as such is a true fulfilment of Jeunet’s goal: a worthy contribution to the French cinematic tradition.

With the recovery of Hollywood in the 1970s, American films, once again, dominated the global market. As demonstrated by filmmakers such as Luc Besson, the struggle of the European filmmakers in the post-Hollywood era was either to “reject the American model and lose viewers, or try to imitate Hollywood with a local accent.” With the struggle of competing against Hollywood and the consequent decline in the export of films, there was a growing conservatism in investors and, as such, experimentation in film dwindled. To compete with Hollywood’s technological innovation-high speed chases, explosions-European filmmakers focused on creating a captivating surface to their films, with the striking image to serve as the ultimate spectacle. In France, this trend manifested itself in the Cinema du Look. A highly artificial aesthetic, Cinema du Look drew visual inspiration from mass culture-music videos, advertisements, fashion photography-to create an aesthetic of surfaces, speaking to the realities of the capitalist era and the significance of the image.