Amelie (2001)

I know I've watched this more recently than 2013 because I showed it to Bethany, but I don't remember when that was.  So I watched it again.  Well, had it on in the background, anyway.  It remains completely charming and sweet.  It's currently unavailable on streaming, but you should own a copy anyway.  Originally posted 4/6/13.    I love this movie.  It's such a sugar rush, a complete confection of a film.  This is one of those great bridges that you can use to get the more reluctant people in your life interested in foreign cinema.  It's so easily accessible.

Amelie (Audrey Tautou) is a young waitress living in Paris.  Having grown up with emotionally distant parents, Amelie is quiet and reserved but with an active imagination.  After a chance incident dislodges a bathroom tile and reveals a long-forgotten box of childhood memories for a former tenant, Amelie decides to return it to him.  The experience inspires her to become a regular do-gooder, interfering in the lives of her co-workers in order to improve or, in one case, punish the deserving.  It's funny, it's sweet, and it's instantly rewatchable.

The fantastically mobile-faced Dominique Pinon supports, as the obsessed-with-his-ex Joseph and he is great but Tautou really anchors this movie.  She is utterly luminous as the feisty but vulnerable Amelie. Really, if you've never seen this, you've done yourself a disservice.  I got it on blu-ray and the color transfer is phenomenal.