Une femme sans amour, c’est comme une fleur sans soleil, ça dépérit
-Amélie
(A woman with love
just as easily
loses strength
for carrying groceries
or her own hands.
Women are are not flowers,
no one is the sun.)
Actually, Yolande Moreau’s character Madeleine says this in the film Amélie… but I still rather like the poem ;)
On September 3rd 1973, at 6:28pm and 32 seconds, a bluebottle fly capable of 14,670 wing beats a minute landed on Rue St Vincent, Montmartre. At the same moment, on a restaurant terrace nearby, the wind magically made two glasses dance unseen on a tablecloth. Meanwhile, in a 5th-floor flat, 28 Avenue Trudaine, Paris 9, returning from his best friend’s funeral, Eugène Colère erased his name from his address book. At the same moment, a sperm with one X chromosome, belonging to Raphaël Poulain, made a dash for an egg in his wife Amandine. Nine months later, Amélie Poulain was born.
I just realised that Amelie Poulain and I were born in the same year (yes, I am old around here!!)
Ten years ago, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s syrupy story about a simpering busybody, played by Audrey Tautou, became a worldwide hit. So why is the dream still not over in 2011?
It lives on for me because a part of me will always identify with Mademoiselle Poulain and her socially awkward manner.
