Amelia (Fabuleux destin d'Amelie Poulain, Le)

Country of origin and year: France/Germany 2001 Original title: Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain Genre: Romantic comedy, drama Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet Screenplay: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Guillaume Laurant Cast: Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Madeleine Wallace Medical topic: avoidant personality disorder. Description: A charming film telling the life story of a young woman (Tautou), a typical example of a personality disorder that in psychiatry is referred to as avoidant personality disorder. Amélie’s parents, who themselves were not without mental health issues, were unable to fulfill their role as her guardians from the moment of her birth.  When Amelia was little, her father limited his contact with his daughter to medical checkups. During these checkups, the girl’s heart beat so fast that her father diagnosed her with a congenital heart defect, which is why Amelia never went to school. Deprived of contact with her peers, navigating between her nervous mother and her cold father, Amelia always escaped into a world of imagination where vinyl records are made like pancakes, and the neighbor’s wife, who has fallen into a coma, uses up her entire allotted sleep in advance. When Amelia was 8, she received a camera. One of the events she photographed was a car accident. A neighbor convinced her that it was her fault. The poor girl returned home, began watching the news full of disasters, and felt that it was all her fault. The main theme of the film is the story of the feelings blossoming between Amelia and the amazing and mysterious Nino. A romantic film, full of magic and a child’s perception of the world, but also very accurate and leaving a lasting impression of one of the disorders listed in the ICD-10.