Short Film Treatment- Romantic Comedy/Magical Realism

Logline: A girl stays home to do all the chores for her family every weekend, while everyone else just sits around or goes out; they are not thankful for what she does and she tells them how she feels taken for granted.

Opens to a girl separated from her family; all of them are sitting down on the couch eating dinner and watching tv together while she is cleaning the kitchen. Once they are done with dinner; they all just put their plates on the counter and go to bed. She is once again left to clean the mess.

The next day she goes up to her parents and ask if she can go out with a couple of friends tomorrow. Her parents say no because she has to clean up the backyard and garage because her 4 other siblings are going out with their parents to an amusement park that day. She finishes cleaning early and asks if she can go with them and her parents denied her again and made her clean their room.

When they get home she asks how it was and they all just ignored her. She went to her room and started to cry. She started to think to herself why her family does not want to be around her or appreciate what she does for them so she went back to the living room and started yelling at them saying she does all the work around the house and is tired of coming last. Her parents tell her to go to her room and never yell at them again. She goes to her room like her parents said and cry herself to sleep.

The nest day is her birthday. She walks downstairs and the kitchen is a mess from breakfast. There is nothing but scraps left and no one is home but her. She is sad but cleans the mess and gets ready to go eat lunch by herself. Her car is an old, beat up car that stalls when she starts it and the paint is coming off. She then goes shopping by herself and when she gets home her family is just sitting at home watching tv. They then ask her if she could go get dinner, she is upset but does what they ask. When she walks in the house is clean and decorated filled with her friends and family. Her parents thought she deserved a surprise party for everything she did and even got her a new car and new tv for her room.

After the party is over her family cleans the mess while she watches tv in her room. Her family apologizes for how they have been acting in the past and that they will all share the responsibility of cleaning.

Amelie Textual Analysis

Color Correction

In the film, Amelie, there is a lot of use of color correction. Jeunet believes that every shot should be a painting, so he used a lot of highly saturated color correction. In Amelie there were many objects in each shot that was color corrected to stand out and show the magical realism. The colors used most in this film are green, red, yellow and some blue.

Tinting

Throughout the film, tinting is used. Tinting in the film is used to show the characters being joyful in order to get the audience engaged into the film. It is also used in the film to change the lighting of the scenes, so that the color scheme would match throughout the film. This adds to the magical realism because the locations look different than they do in real life. Tinting in this film was used to show and emphasize the character's emotions.

Breaking the 4th Wall

In the film, Amelie continuously breaks the 4th wall and talks to the audience. This helps bring the audience into the emotion of the film and engages them to want to pay attention to the film. Breaking the 4th wall allows the audience to enjoy the fiction as if they were observing real events. Jeunet uses this to show the romantic comedy side of the film. This allows the audience to feel closer to the character since the character is telling the audience their feelings or thoughts directly.

Narration

In the beginning of the film the narrator tells the audience a lot of information in a short period of time. Also information that is random like that Amelie likes to stick her hand in a bag of beans. Narration in this film is used to introduce the characters and quirky things about their personalities. The weird things about the characters mentioned help bring the audience into the film. The dialogue picks up more towards the middle and end of the film; Jeunet uses narration in the beginning of the film so the audience can start a relationship with the characters and understand their personality then use dialogue to back up the narration.