The original title is LE FABULEUX DESTIN D’AMĆLIE POULAIN which can be very easily translated into “the fabulous destiny of AmĆ©lie Poulain”.
It’s an absolutely lovely film – and I think it was the first French film I ever watched in cinema. It is one of my favourite films and AmĆ©lie is one of my heroines – I can relate to her very much.

In the film she personated by Audrey Tautou, who you may know from THE DA VINCI CODE (2006).
Here you have the US trailer for AMĆLIE – so you can take a first glance at it (some of the really beautiful pieces of music of this film can be already heard in this clip):
Maybe you recognized the young man: It’s Mathieu Kassovitz who also was in THE FIFTH ELEMENT (1997) and in MUNICH (2005) and he will be in HAYWIRE (2011)…
Now let’s talk about the music:
Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet originally wanted composer Michael Nyman to write the music for this film but changed his mind after listening to a CD by Yann Tiersen. So he bought the rights of Yann Tiersen’s melodies and used them for this film.
Yann Tiersen (who you can see in the picture above) also wrote one piece of music for this film which is used in different variations: LA VALSE D’AMĆLIE (= "the waltz of AmĆ©lie")
Not every song of this score was written by Yann Tiersen – here is GUILTY which was very popular in the 1930s - and it’s a wonderful song if you like to whistle… guess who does?!? ;”)
I can truly tell you – it’s a great soundtrack for long-distance trips by train (I checked that in several self-experiments..) – I can’t say anything about its “car-trip qualities” – yours Irene isn’t allowed to drive a car.. – mostly because she hasn’t got a driver’s license.. So you have to find that out by yourself.
I will add a poll again – you’ll have two weeks to decide which of those tracks I presented here is your favourite.
Yours (very well and) truly,
Irene
