Now, the "fabulous destiny of Amélie Poulain" (known simply as Amélie in this country) ostensibly serves as a love story, though in Nino (Mathieu Kassovitz), our selfless young heroine hasn't found her cosmic match so much as a pleasantly curious young man whom she happens to think deserves a girlfriend. And so, naturally, Amélie elects herself for the job and devises a pleasantly curious way of courting the chap.

Amélie's plans tend towards the outlandishly convoluted -- to teach a rotten fruit vendor a lesson, she breaks into his apartment, rewires his electricity and pours salt in his whiskey -- which makes for an elaborate mousetrap of a movie. Luckily, director Jean-Pierre Jeunet specializes in overblown modern fairy tales. Collaborating with Marc Caro on Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, Jeunet proved himself the first French filmmaker since Georges Méliès to truly tap the magic of cinema. He is just as inventive here, though he picks up the pace, channeling the frenetic energy of a movie like Run Lola Run to more whimsical ends.

The result feels as charming and irresistible as its subject, a picture so lovingly cluttered with bric-a-brac, we require a jolly narrator to guide us through. And when everything has reached its "happily ever after," you can't help but suspect that clever little Amélie Poulain lent her life to the movies because she knew how happy it would surely make us.

[as featured on Moviefone.com]