The future sure looks like the first half of the 20th centuary... anyone have any idea what was supposed to have happened? What was that yellow smoke?
shareI don't know if it's supposed to be at a particular time - although I agree it does look post-WWII. I think there must have been some sort of holocaust or nuclear bomb but not necessarily during WWII ...
that's my interpretation, anyway =]
You think this is a safari, b!tch?
yes, it's supposed to be the post-apocalyptic world in the twenty-first century. i think.
so a big boom happened. but i can't explain the yellow smoke.
The back of the dvd says it takes place in "post-holocaust France"...
it's possible that the 'holocaust' loosely reflects the WWII holocaust, in which case the film would be set in late 40s/50s, which would match the whole look of the film.
Although, technically, there are holocausts and then there is the Holocaust. It could be a non-specific reference to an apocalyptic sort of event, though using that particular word is *usually* confined to its "Europe ca. 1938-1945" meaning.
shareYes the movie take palce in the future. If there is a lot of things coming from the past and the 50's i think it is to disturbe the spectator. It is probably also because it is more cheap to take old radio than design a make built a new one.
And it is Jeunet and Caro style, look the City of lost cildren, everythings looks old too. The better is to ask him the question. And these 2 guys love tun everything in yellow or green (Delicatessen, The city of lost children, Amelie)
I think that the presence of so many things from the past (women's clothes, all the objects in the spaces) gives the future a feeling of being dark and run-down instead of bright and hopeful. This is such a typically French gloomy vision of an unhappy future, existential and suspended in a hell-like limbo.
The characters mention that nothing grows anymore, there are no animals left to eat and people are hoarding grain like valuable jewels. The Troglodists mention that they get eaten if they stray above ground, so clearly, it's a world where desperation and chaos reign and people have been reduced to a survival-only existence. The butcher has provided a little bastion of relative safety in his building, but at a price.
Brazil is another film where the future includes much style from the past. I find it very effective and kind of jarring to see the future depicted this way.
It's called retro-futurism. A future world with a retro feel to it. Like Steampunk. But, whereas Steampunk has a certain victorian/early 20th century feel to it, this film has a certain 50's feel to it. Like how Alex Proyas sci-fi film "Dark City" has a certain 40's retro feel to it. Or how "La Cite..." actually had a lot of steampunk in it. And of course, Terry Gilliams "Brazil".
Above all, Jeunet et Caro is all about sentimentality and nostalgia, and they are nostalgic about the time they grew up in, the time from the second world war and up. "Amelie" is filled with all of those nostalgic tidbits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retro-futurism
I assumed it was set in France soon after the Liberation, though an exaggerated and surreal version. It never occurred to me that it was supposed to be in a post-apocalyptic distant future.
Recently watched Bertrand Tavernier's masterpiece "Safe Conduct" (2002) set in WWII Paris, where there is a running joke about bartering food for everything, jobs, sex, cigarettes, exemption from arrest, lodgings, and so on.
I think both films are rooted in memories of dire food shortages in France in the 1940's. Obviously many other countries had it even worse, but France is the pre-eminent nation of "foodies".