In one of the online groups to which I belong, I had started a “question of the day” habit as a way for us to all get to know one another better. Many of these questions begin with “What is your favorite…”. For the vast majority of these questions, I have a nearly impossible time deciding. Favorite song? Favorite band? Favorite book? Favorite food? I can narrow down to two or three, or else the answer varies based on the day, the weather, or the alignment of the stars. There is, however, one question to which my fickle heart always provides the same answer.

Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (just called Amélie here in the States) is unequivocally my all time favorite movie.

Now, sure, there are plenty of other movies I’ve loved. Wes Anderson seems to have a pretty good grasp of the kind of thing I like. Anything with Nick Frost and Simon Pegg warrants at least one viewing. I could watch Stardust over and over. The Princess Bride, The Great Escape, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline… all fantastic movies that I love watching, that I can quote backwards, forwards, and inside out. Every time I come across one of them while flipping channels, I will always stop to watch them. When it comes right down to it, though, down to that one movie, the one I’d want with me on a desert island, the one I would choose if I could only watch one movie for the rest of my days, Amélie would be it.

It is not, as I was jokingly accused, just because she shares my name (though I’ll admit it may have passed under my radar if she didn’t). Amélie is, at its core, a love story.

I’m a sucker for a good love story.

Amélie is an endearing and quirky character played by the enchanting Audrey Tautou. She meets an equally quirky guy and falls head over heels in love with him. She plots, plans, and goes to all sorts ridiculous lengths to catch his attention. Sounds rather like someone I know.

Alright, I didn’t really start this post to talk about how fantastic Amélie is. We’ve established that it’s my favorite movie. That’s the important part.  Now…

Recently, I got a message from a friend of mine saying “Did you hear they’re making Amélie into a musical?”

My little heart skipped a beat. No, I hadn’t! How exciting! I love musicals! I adore Amélie! This is fantastic! Clearly this is my chance to finally fulfill the dream of my younger days to become a Broadway starlet! So I did a little research (There may be no phrase that sends one rushing to the internet with lightning speed quite like “Did you hear?”). After reading through a few articles, all of which seem to reference the same interview with the composer, my initial enthusiasm began to dampen. The basic gist of the interview is that he loves everything about Amélie, like the score and the fact that it’s French, but that’s not really his thing so it’ll be completely different.

Wait, what?

Okay, so now I was rapidly spiraling towards the knee jerk reaction of “How could they possibly do this to that thing I love? They ruin everything. They always do.” (I do not know who ‘they’ are or why they do these things, but they always seem to, don’t they?) It’s the battle cry of the internet over every remake. Every movie and tv show must face the angered masses with their screams of “THE BOOK WAS BETTER!!”

I refuse to be one of those people…

…at least, this time.

Comparing a movie or tv show to its source material is going to happen; it has to. I am going to make the terrifying and bold assertion that one doesn’t have to be better than another. It is, in fact, okay for to enjoy them both. It’s even possibly, blasphemous as it may sound, to prefer an adaptation to its original source material (How to Train Your Dragon, or at least book one, was dreadful). Preferences are, after all, opinions, and everyone is entitled to their own. I have no patience with those who berate people who enjoy a movie without having read the book first. There’s nothing wrong with it. In fact, as a child, I almost always saw the movie first and then went back to read the books they were based on (The Neverending Story is the most notable example I can think of).

Note: I will concede and accept the phrase “doesn’t do justice” when comparing two adaptations of something. While there is bound to be something lost in translation between one media and another, some people have managed it better than others. I think Game of Thrones and The Princess Bride are both excellent adaptations. No, they don’t have all the nuance and substance of the original books that they draw from, but the hold true to the original feel while developing their own identities.

In my attempt to maintain a grasp on the more reasonable and logical side of myself, I decided to sit down and watch Amélie. I wanted a viewing where I specifically thought about making it into a stage musical. I’ve seen this movie dozens (hundreds?) of times, but I am generally content to sit back and enjoy it without really thinking about why. After all, don’t I over-think things enough without analyzing everything I watch? With this viewing, I was able to pinpoint the things about the movie that have secured its eternal place in my heart as my all time favorite. I then set about figuring out how they would work as a stage show.

1. The soundtrack: There is something just so delightfully and overwhelmingly French about Yann Tiersen’s soundtrack. When listening to it, you can’t help but imagine yourself sipping a coffee or a glass of wine and dining on sinful pastries while sitting at a little table outside a cafe overlooking the Seine. It toes the line of cliche without ever crossing over.

In terms of how this will work in the musical… well, it won’t. Composer Dan Messé has already said that while he adores the original score of the film, his compositions won’t be anything like it. From the interview:

And I’m not interested in doing Parisian music. I don’t think I’m even going to use accordion in my score.

Well, okay, that’s fine, I suppose. This is, after all, going to be a production for American theatre. Phantom of the Opera and Les Mis both take place in Paris and neither, for the most part, have particularly French scores. The major difference is that Amélie relies so heavily on its score because of the limited dialogue in the movie. Which brings me to…

2. Narration and limited dialogue: One of my absolute favorite features of Amélie is the fact that it is so flawlessly narrated. There is, really, very little dialogue, and most of the character development is done via the all knowing narrator who is, himself, completely removed from the story. There are, in my opinion, very few films that pull this off successfully. This narrator gives us Amélie’s point of view of the world, and yet is completely separate from it. I love the very beginning of the movie when all of the characters are being introduced. We are given insight into their personalities by being told their likes and dislikes (“Amélie’s father likes to tear big pieces of wallpaper off the walls.” “Her mother doesn’t like to have the marks of the sheets on her cheek in the morning.” “Amélie asks herself silly questions about the world or about the town. For example, how many couples are having an orgasm right now?”) Right from the start, we get little details and idiosyncrasies about these characters that, in reality, we probably wouldn’t learn until we had known them for many years. It provides an immediate intimacy that lets you slip right into the lives of these people without missing a beat.

I’m not sure how this would work as a musical. There is a certain precedent for a narrator in musical theatre (I’m thinking Into the Woods); I’m sure it could be done fairly well. I think for it to be as successful a vehicle for story as it is in the film, the narrator would have to remain unseen. If he becomes his own character, an individual, it changes something. He is no longer Amélie’s voice and perspective; he is some other entity entirely. Still, I don’t think it’s impossible. It would just be a challenge to do well.

3. Audrey Tautou as Amélie: I’m fairly certain that if someone were to remake Amélie with the exact same script, exact same score, exact same cast, but change out Audrey Tautou, I wouldn’t love it like I do. There’s something about the way she portrays Amélie that is the perfect mix of innocence and mischief. She is positively adorable. I want to be her. I’ve seen her in other movies (the most widely known is probably The DaVinci Code).  She’s a very good actress, with a very Hepburn quality about her, but it’s just not the same. There’s some magical alchemy that happened when character and actress combined. There are plenty of other examples throughout film history, and it’s almost impossible to force into being. It’s some mix of happenstance and luck that brings about these endearing and unforgettable performances. You fall in love with her, and your heart aches along with hers.

Without Audrey Tautou (or, likely, even with her), a stage show won’t be quite the same. I’m sure whoever they find to play Amélie will be wonderful… but, well, it won’t be the same.

4. The plots and schemes: Amélie is a fan of schemes. She’s always up to something. This generally involves one of a handful of side plots adjacent to her own love story. Whether its her landlady whose husband ran off with his secretary, the man with bones of glass who lives in her building, or her father, who has become a hermit, she’s always getting herself mixed up in other peoples’ lives.

This is another one of those things that I don’t think will be impossible to translate to the stage, but it will definitely be quite an undertaking. Keeping track of so many asides and subplots can really bog down a story if you’re not careful. All these characters and plots also mean that there are a lot of locations the story takes place. This is either impossible for a stage show or means that there will be a nonsensical number of set changes that take place. Again, not something impossible, but certainly not a straightforward thing to do.

5. The visuals: Jean-Pierre Jeunet is known for his use of color in his films. In Amélie, everything is red and green. It’s really visually stunning and, I think, gives it almost a vintage feel. In fact, most of the visuals in Amélie are sort of timeless. It clearly takes place in a modern time (there are all the modern convenience, like air travel and a sex shop), but you almost never feel like it is “today”. Part of it is Amélie herself, but much credit goes to the beautiful visual style.

While this could probably be attempted in a live performance, I can’t help but feel it would be a mistake. The over-the-top color manipulation in the movie would come off as very odd on stage. Certainly a nod could be given to the original visuals, but I think anything more would be off-putting.

It seems, at this point, that I have taken all of my favorite things about Amélie and declared them more or less impossible to recreate as a musical. In spite of this, I am not ready to condemn it.

Consider, if you will, the 2003 movie The Italian Job. I really enjoyed it. I’m a sucker for a good heist movie, and this one gave me everything I wanted without winding down the dark path of gratuitous violence that so many take. Plus, y’know, Mini Coopers. After we had seen it about a dozen times or so, my friends and I decided to track down the original 1969 version. I mean, it stars Michael Caine. How could we lose?

Well, we loved the original, but we also discovered something interesting: The 2003 movie was not a remake at all. The only similarities were that they shared a title and the use of Mini Coopers. They didn’t have the same storyline or the same feel. They are completely different movies. In fact, after seeing the Michael Caine movie, we realized that the new version was just a two hour commercial for the rerelease of the Mini Cooper.

In spite of this, I still like both movies. Sure, maybe the 2003 Italian Job didn’t need to be called that; it could have been called anything and still have been an enjoyable movie. I don’t even think that the original would still have had enough popularity in 2003 to have made that a selling point for people. If they had just decided to make it its own movie, I never would have noticed that it was an extremely high budget (and yet successful) ad.

This is what I think is going to happen with an Amélie musical. It is going to be a completely different entity from the movie that I adore so much. By keeping the same name and actively using the film as source material, they are going to invite comparison. Depending on how it does its job of adapting a movie to theatre, this could work for or against them.

So, at the end of all this, I’m not saying that an Amélie musical would be bad. What I am saying, though, is that I’m not sure an Amélie musical would really be Amélie. One could certainly pick less compelling source material to draw from; that works in its favor. I shall attempt, with every fiber of my being, not to stamp my feet and declare “Travesty!” until something has actually come into being that I can judge for myself.