I played flexible, and then she said, “you can come take a picture now if you’d like.” “Mais oui, pourquoi pas I responded.” She said, one second, realized her cigarette was already finished, threw it into the street, and invited me in. I did my best to play it cool, holding back my excitement and knowing deep down that if it didn’t happen today there would be more excuses for it not to happen. While I feared having to convince her, she took no convincing. I said I was wondering it would be possible to take a picture with the gnome.
#GNOME AMELIE FULL#
I didn’t have a chance to talk myself out of it, and instead with utter confidence I was my full self and in French told her I was a neighbor, three years ago I’d spotted the gnome inside, that I was not only a fan of gnomes (I showed her mine on my screen saver of my phone) but also of the movie. Then, two weeks ago when I saw her smoking a cigarette outside while wearing a hot pink jumper I knew this was my chance even though I knew I had somewhere to be. She had better things to do than answer to my fandom. I didn’t want to interrupt the woman working at the desk. I knew it was something I didn’t want to force, so knocking on the door didn’t feel right. The other challenge was there were limited opportunities-and a year+ in lockdown-for this encounter to actually take place. Let’s just say the reaction didn’t inspire me, so I had this underlying fear I would leave disappointed again.
#GNOME AMELIE MOVIE#
I told him how much I loved his movie and hoped one day he’d direct my movie about Paris swimming pools. Years prior I had met the director of Amélie. The idea of meeting the gnome was a daunting task given that I didn’t want to be disappointed or rejected. I’d do my best to spot him through the window when I could, as a way of saying, “I see you and respect you, Mr. So for 3 years I went through life with the dream of being able to MEET the gnome one day. I wondered how I had never noticed this before, but then I realized the window wasn’t always open, and when it was the blinds were hung in a way that it wasn’t obvious, and most of the time the lighting was a way that you would never know, unless you KNOW. I quickly realized that THE gnome from Amélie was my neighbor. The front door was open too giving me a direct look. I walked outside and saw something caught my eye in the back of a room across the street. Three years into living in my apartment it was a sunny end of day. This wasn’t so much a conscious decision-more one of convenience as a friend had an apartment I could rent-but perhaps the universe was at work.
In grad school I explored the use of color in the film for a class project (and gave Amélie tours for a time), when I became French it was only fitting that I celebrated at Aux Deux Moulins (the café where Amélie works), and for my 40th birthday my friend Jenni surprised me with the most epic gnome cake EVER! I loved that it was full of quirky characters, where oddities were embraced rather than masked.Ībout 5 years ago I moved to Montmartre, Amélie’s neigbhorhood. The movie has inspired me over the years.
I’d seen many French movies at the time (it was a way I could get extra credit in my high school French class), but this was the first movie that saw the world more how I did (it was also one of the first French movies I’d seen that felt like had an actual plot line).
One of my favorite teachers-whose classes would go on to shape so much of the work I do today-took us to see the Jean-Pierre Jeunet movie Amélie that came out that fall.
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