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The Guardian
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I smile every time': why Amélie is my feelgood movie
The hallway leading to my boyfriend's flat features a Japanese poster of the 2001 French romcom, Amélie. Why it's there is something of a mystery to us both; none of his neighbours have laid claim to it yet and, between the ground and second floors, it's the lone decoration among a sea of teal tiles. Yet there Amélie is, reading in bed beneath two portraits of a goose and a dog in Elizabethan collar. I smile every time I see the poster, reminded of the sometimes-silly, small pleasures that make life worth living. And better yet, our miraculous capacity for being good to one another. Although Amélie was one of the first 'adult' films I ever watched, you'd be hard-pressed to find anything very serious in it at all – except, perhaps, for the brief compilation of couples in orgasm. The titular Amélie Poulain (Audrey Tautou) is a shy but mischievous waitress in Montmartre, Paris. As a young girl, her mother was killed by a suicidal Canadian tourist who jumped from the roof of Notre Dame. Amélie's father then becomes increasingly withdrawn and devotes himself to building a miniature shrine to house his late wife's ashes. It's a lonely childhood for Amélie, but the tragicomic here skews more comic. A suicidal fish briefly offers her some company, as does her overactive imagination. When Amélie becomes a young woman and the doe-eyed archetype of the early aughts Manic Pixie Dream Girls everywhere, she decides to bring happiness to all those she can. She returns a tin of childhood treasures to a lonely man and plays matchmaker between a waitress and a customer. While escorting a blind man to the Métro, she describes the world around them so that, if only for a moment, he can see it through her eyes. Amélie asks a flight attendant friend to send her father pictures of his garden gnome travelling the world and convinces him to do the same. Nothing, I think, could sum up the film's intent better than this quote from its narrator: 'Amélie has a strange feeling of absolute harmony. It's a perfect moment. A soft light, a scent in the air, the quiet murmur of the city. A surge of love, an urge to help mankind overcomes her.' I should, ethically, issue a disclaimer here. If director Jean-Pierre Jeunet's credentials as a French man might lead you to believe that his Paris is a truthful depiction of the place, then you might be mistaken. This Paris is less Godard than it is a Technicolor lovechild of the city we see in Emily in Paris and the one from Ratatouille (the runner-up for my feelgood film of choice). It is fun, fantastical, and simply does not exist. This certainly doesn't absolve Amélie of, as per one critic's suggestion, magicking away 'the inappropriate realities of poverty and racism'. But these issues are deserving of just a sidelong glance from a feelgood film and there is, I hope, some value in choosing to escape the real world every once in a while. After completing several good deeds, Amélie falls in love with the elusive Nino (Mathieu Kassovitz), a sex shop employee who likes to collect strangers' photobooth pictures. I like that this part reminds me how deeply we can care about people we don't yet know. Living in as many cities as I have, I am always touched by the kindness of strangers: volunteers at workers' and tenants' unions who give their time to help me; bystanders who, at their own risk, have protected me when I've been alone on nights out. Although Amélie's kindness might be the apotheosis of whimsy, it's radical in its own way – a quiet protest against the indifference and self-interest that seem to rule city life. We see, too, how Amélie delights in tiny joys like cracking creme brulee with a spoon and skimming stones on Canal Saint-Martin. At the risk of being twee, I have also cultivated my own taste for small pleasures over the years. Thumbing through old postcards in antique shops and the sound of woodpigeons in the morning make me very happy, and proudly so. My relationship spawned out of a long-distance friendship fuelled by lengthy exchanges about what we love and thought the other would, too; in Amélie and that fact alone, I feel flooded with the sense that these or things like these can make for a pretty wonderful life. Amélie is available to rent digitally in the US
Hindustan Times
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
BJ Novak dating Delaney Rowe? Fans express disbelief: ‘Thought he was married to Mindy Kaling this whole time'
The Office co-stars B.J. Novak and Mindy Kaling had an on-and-off relationship off-screen that mirrored their beloved characters. Although they've long spoken about their now-platonic love for each other, fans have continued to root for them as a couple. However, a new report from People has left the internet stunned: B.J. Novak is reportedly dating TikTok star Delaney Rowe. (Also Read: Mindy Kaling reacts to rumours that BJ Novak is her children's biological father: 'It it hasn't affected my happiness') Romance rumours between B.J. Novak and Delaney Rowe first surfaced in December 2024 when the two were spotted together at the Bowery Hotel in New York City, according to Deuxmoi. Delaney, a popular content creator, rose to fame for her 'cringe comedy' sketches. One of her most viral videos featured a monologue from the perspective of the 'absolutely insufferable female lead of an indie movie.' Her content often parodies media tropes like the Manic Pixie Dream Girl or women written by male screenwriters. She also appeared in the 2023 film The List. After reports of the romance surfaced, fans took to the internet in disbelief. 'I thought he was married to Mindy Kaling this whole time,' one person wrote. Another added, 'Somebody check on Mindy Kaling.' Others chimed in with, 'STOP. Really? I love Delaney, but does this mean that he and Mindy were… never?' and 'This is impossible because he's married to Mindy Kaling, obvy.' One of the fans wrote, "I refuse to believe this. Someone call Mindy." Another said, "STOP. Really? I love Delaney, but does this mean that he and Mindy were… never?" Mindy and Novak dated on and off while working on The Office but have maintained a close friendship ever since. In a 2022 appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show, Mindy spoke about their bond, saying Novak is 'a wonderful friend and the godparent of both my kids.' She added, "He's really part of our family, but we've known each other for a long, long time and I think anyone who's been friends with someone for 18, 19 years and at one point dated and now doesn't, they maybe understand this. You have exes that you wouldn't necessarily marry now." The pair have continued to support each other personally and professionally, collaborating on projects and appearing together at red carpet events.
Los Angeles Times
14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
When the fact-checker in question is not exactly a reliable narrator
The cover of Austin Kelley's debut novel, 'The Fact Checker,' will be immediately recognizable to a certain type of person: Ah, the New Yorker, they might think, before blinking and realizing that it isn't. I am that kind of person; the famous weekly has been around my whole life, issues piled on the bathroom counter or lying open on the kitchen table, and I eventually read them as well. At some point, I learned about its famous fact-checkers, the people who toil away in relative obscurity (the magazine doesn't list them anywhere, though you may find some by trawling LinkedIn) in order to make sure that every factual statement the magazine publishes is correct — even if those facts appear within poetry. 'The Fact Checker' is narrated by a man holding the titular title who is, essentially, a flâneur: a literary type who wanders around his urban environment, observing and commenting on society from a somewhat detached position. While the magazine he works for remains unnamed, it's clearly meant to be the New Yorker; but readers hoping for juicy insider gossip will be disappointed (actual insiders — those who were around in the mid-aughts, anyway — may recognize the types and tempers Kelley's narrator interacts with at work). The title, the cover, the font — they're all rather effective bait. Fact-checking does feature in the novel, of course. The main plot, which takes place in July and August 2004, kicks off when the narrator is given an article to check about the Union Square Greenmarket — referred to as Mandeville/Green for its author and subject, respectively. It's a simple enough piece, and the fact-checker deals with much of it in short order. But one quote, about 'nefarious business' going on at the market, makes him pause, and he goes in search of the source, Sylvia, in order to confirm what she told the author and ask for details. Sylvia is a classic Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Mandeville says she's 'interesting,' which the narrator recognizes might be a euphemism for her being insane and/or sexy. She has a distinctive feature (a scar) that seems to heighten her beauty to the narrator's eyes, and is passionate about things, including the tomatoes she grows. She takes the narrator on a journey, first to a cemetery and then to a secret supper club run out of a squatted-in office in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan; she grew up on a commune and claims it was a cult, really, but she likes the idea of cults: 'If you are in a cult, you are really committed, worshiping the Deity. Worshiping the good. That's all I want to do in this life. Worship the good.' After sleeping with the narrator, she leaves him a note promising to call and promptly disappears. He spends the rest of the novel trying to track her down. Much like critic Nathan Rabin's definition of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl type who exists 'in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors,' Sylvia is there 'to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.' The Fact Checker, who isn't entirely over an ex-girlfriend who cheated on him with her dissertation advisor — another familiar type — is one such young man. As he tries to find her, he ends up in a series of interesting places (an anarchist meeting in a boat, for example, or the Irish Hunger Memorial), talking to interesting people (Sylvia's friends and co-workers, mainly, but also an apparently lonely and chatty Tony Curtis), and having interesting thoughts, many of which are concerned with factoids he obviously learned while doing his job (Audrey Munson, the 'American Venus'; the transition to new street signs in New York). The Fact Checker is an unreliable narrator not only because he's telling his story from a remove of at least seven years (he mentions Lyft in the last chapter, which was founded in 2012), but also because whenever he's not in the office, he's unceremoniously yet steadily drinking, often to the point of blackout. This seems to be more of a problem than he's admitting, and it's not the only self-deception he practices. He wants to be a good guy: he's always nervous he's going to be perceived as creepy by the women he encounters, he questions his assumptions about people he sees, and he's uncomfortable with the sexism he witnesses among male friends and acquaintances. But he also never interjects when privy to such 'guy talk' and he downplays how much his own obsession with finding Sylvia is linked to his fantasy of her, as well as how her disappearance reminds him of his ex's own behavioral patterns. The Fact Checker is an engaging figure not for his own sake — a friend of Sylvia's, Agnes, tells him at one point that he's 'a blank man' and she's not wrong — but for the inconsistencies in his behaviors, and the dramatic irony inherent in the mismatch between his own narration and what we, as well as those around him, begin to see in him. 'I remember that day well,' the Fact Checker tells us on the book's first page, but by the end of his first encounter with Sylvia, when she hands him a bag of tomatoes, he thinks, 'It seemed intimate, almost flirtatious. Or maybe I'm misremembering the whole thing.' While 'The Fact Checker' is uneven, it's a fun and quick read, and it does raise some of the most relevant questions du jour: What is a fact? What is truth? And who gets to decide? Masad, a books and culture critic, is the author of the novel 'All My Mother's Lovers' and the forthcoming novel 'Beings.'
