‘Amélie’ Next Movies With Spirit Screening

KINGSTON – The lively, fanciful romantic comedy “Amélie,” about a painfully shy Parisian waitress who makes sly incursions into the lives of her neighbors, is the next Movies With Spirit screening, at 7 p.m. July 15 at Congregation Emanuel of the Hudson Valley, 243 Albany Ave. in Kingston.

Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s film, in French with English subtitles, is “irresistibly endearing,” says Claudia Puig in USA Today.

“Bursts through the language barrier,” says Kate Muir in The Times of London.

“One of the year’s best,” says Alan Morrison in British film magazine Empire.

“A life-affirming satire that transcends reality,” says Wesley Lovell in Cinema Sight.

The fairy tale-like story focuses on the title character, Amélie Poulain (Audrey Tautou), who had tragedy in her early life and now works as a waitress in a tiny Paris café staffed and frequented by a collection of eccentrics.

Withdrawn and lonely, Amélie avoids socializing, seeking instead to find contentment in simple pleasures, such as dipping her hand into grain sacks and cracking crème brûlée with a spoon.

One day Amélie makes a surprising discovery and sees her life drastically changed for the better.

From then on, she dedicates herself to helping others find happiness by doing clandestine good deeds in the most delightfully unexpected ways.

But will she have the courage to do for herself what she has done for others?

The 2001 film, which won 57 critic and festival awards, including the Chicago International Film Festival’s Audience Choice Award, runs 122 minutes and is rated R.

The film’s trailer can be found on YouTube at tinyurl.com/Amelie-Trailer.
The Kingston screening will be followed by a facilitated discussion. Refreshments will be served.

Attendees over age 12 are asked to contribute.

“Amélie” is a charming tour de force in which “faith is replaced by predestination or simple luck, and the universe proves, against all odds, to be a place of kindness and abiding love,” says Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal.

The monthly Movies With Spirit series, organized by Gerry Harrington of Kingston, seeks to stimulate people’s sense of joy and wonder, inspire love and compassion, evoke a deepened understanding of people’s integral connection with others and with life itself, and support individual cultures, faith paths and beliefs while simultaneously transcending them.

The films are screened in diverse houses of worship and reverence across Ulster and Dutchess counties at 7 p.m. on the third Saturday every month. The series has no religious affiliation.

For more information about “Amélie” and the rest of the series, contact Harrington at 845-389-9201 or at gerryharrington@mindspring.com. Details are also available at movieswithspirit.com and facebook.com/MoviesWithSpirit.