AmÉlie (Le Fabuleux Destin d'AmÉlie Poulain), 2001
Director
Cast
visit the film locations
Paris flights: Paris Charles de Gaulle International Airport
Most of the locations for Amelie can be found around Montmartre, Paris (Metro: Abbesses)
Visit: Cathedral Notre Dame de Paris
Trivia
For more of romantic Paris, see Woody Allen’s Midnight In Paris, or Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset
If you're in Montmartre, you can see the steep flight of steps and the bar from Ronin.
Amélie film location: the bluebottle: rue Saint Vincent, Montmartre, Paris
Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who made the studio-bound Delicatessen and City of Lost Children, films on locations around the city of Paris, and risks jettisoning the darkness of those films to tread the fine line between charmingly whimsical and the wincingly twee.
Amélie film location: Amélie’s mother is killed: Notre Dame, Paris
Jeunet just about manages to stay on the right side, setting the tone when Amélie’s mother is killed by a tourist plummeting from the tower of Cathedral Notre Dame de Paris.
He turns Paris, and particularly Montmartre – the director’s home turf – into a brightly-coloured fantasy (though you might be surprised to know that the interiors were shot in the studio in Germany, in Cologne).
Amélie film location: Amelie's apartment: rue des Trois Freres, Montmartre, Paris
The film opens with a bluebottle buzzing along the charming, cobbled rue Saint Vincent, running behind Sacre Coeur in Montmartre. Amélie's apartment and the grocery store can also be found in Montmartre (close to the bar where Robert de Niro and crew meet up in John Frankenheimer's Ronin).
Amélie film location: the greengrocer store: Au Marche de la Butte, Passage des Abbesses, Montmartre, Paris
And not far away is Métro Lamarck-Caulaincourt, the beautiful Metro station with the double staircase, where the blind man experiences a moment of transcendence as Amélie describes the mouthwatering sights of the bustling market on rue Lamarck.
Amélie film location: Amélie describes the market to the blind man: Lamarck-Caulaincourt Metro Station, Paris
Amélie (Audrey Tautou) searches for ‘Bretodeau’, to return his box of precious mementoes, in a phone booth at the northern end of rue Mouffetard at rue Clovis, down in the Left Bank's cosmopolitan Latin Quarter, not far from the Pantheon.
Amélie film location: Amélie returns the box of mementoes: La Verre a Pied, Rue Mouffetard, Paris
The bar in which she overhears the result of her good deed is just to the south, Le Verre a Pied, 118 bis rue Mouffetard.
Amélie film location: a sudden surge of love: Pont des Arts, Paris
She's imbued with a surge of love and the desire to help mankind while crossing the wooden Pont des Arts, by the Louvre (scene of the failed suicide attempt in Boudu Sauvé des Eaux, Jean Renoir's 1932 classic, remade by Hollywood as Down and Out in Beverly Hills). It”s also the spot where Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) disappears at the end of The Bourne Identity.
Amélie film location: Amélie sees Nino's “Ou et quand?” posters: Line 6 Station of La Motte-Picqet-Grenelle, Paris
Amélie sees Nino's “Ou et quand?” posters on the Line 6 Station of La Motte-Picqet-Grenelle.
She sets up a complicated assignation, involving following blue arrows, on the steps in front of Sacre Coeur, dominating Montmartre, and solves the riddle of the mystery man, who’s been leaving his photo everywhere, in the ticket hall of Gare de l’Est.
Amélie film location: the video store in which Nino works: Palace Video, Boulevard de Clichy, Pigalle, Paris
Nino (Mathieu Kassovitz) works in Palace Video, 37 boulevard de Clichy, a sex shop in the raunchy Pigalle district (where you’ll find the original, though rather touristified, Moulin Rouge nightclub is still operating).
Amélie film location: Crème brulée: Café les Deux Moulins, Montmartre, Paris
But, of course, the location you really want to see is the lovely art deco cafe where Amélie works, which is, surprisingly, real. It’s Café des Deux Moulins, 15 rue Lepic at rue Cauchois. It can be a bit tricky to find. Rue Lepic winds down from Place du Tertre then seems to merge into rue des Abbesses. In fact, the street turns sharply south, and the cafe is south of rue des Abbesses.
And, yes, you can sample the crème brulée here, which is now named after Amélie.
