It tells the story of Amélie Poulain, played by Audrey Tautou, a shy and quirky waitress who decides to change the lives of those around her for the better while dealing with her own isolation.

The film features an ensemble cast of supporting roles, including Mathieu Kassovitz, Rufus, Lorella Cravotta, Serge Merlin, Jamel Debbouze, Claire Maurier, Clotilde Mollet, Isabelle Nanty, Dominique Pinon, Artus de Penguern, Yolande Moreau, Urbain Cancelier, and Maurice Bénichou.

Amélie Poulain is born in 1974 and brought up by eccentric parents who – incorrectly believing that she has a heart defect – decide to homeschool her.

When Amélie is six, her mother, Amandine, is killed when a suicidal Canadian tourist jumps from the roof of Notre-Dame de Paris and lands on her.

Amélie leaves home at the age of 18 and becomes a waitress at the Café des 2 Moulins in Montmartre, which is staffed and frequented by a collection of eccentrics.

She is single and lets her imagination roam freely, finding contentment in simple pleasures like dipping her hand into grain sacks, cracking crème brûlée with a spoon, and skipping stones along the Canal Saint-Martin.

[5] On 31 August 1997, startled by the news of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, Amélie drops a plastic perfume-stopper, which dislodges a wall tile and accidentally reveals an old metal box which contains childhood memorabilia hidden by a boy who lived in her apartment decades earlier.

After asking the apartment's concierge and several old tenants about the boy's identity, Amélie meets her reclusive neighbour, Raymond Dufayel, an artist with brittle bone disease who replicates Pierre-Auguste Renoir's 1881 painting Luncheon of the Boating Party every year.

She convinces Madeleine Wallace, the concierge of her block of flats, that the husband who abandoned her had sent her a final conciliatory love letter just before his accidental death years before.

Dufayel recognizes this and uses the girl in the painting to push Amélie to examine her attraction to a quirky young man, Nino Quincampoix, who collects the discarded photographs of strangers from passport photo booths.

The absence of Amélie at the festival caused something of a controversy because of the warm welcome by the French media and audience in contrast with the reaction of the selector.

[14] In 2021, Newen Connect's TF1 Studio signed a deal with UGC for international distribution and sales rights to its films, including Amélie.

[4][15][16][17] In February 2022, while discussing the legacy of Amélie in an interview with The New York Times, Jeunet stated that U.S. distribution rights to the film, previously held by Miramax Zoë, had been acquired by Sony Pictures Classics, with the company planning a re-release in the future.

The website's critics consensus reads, "The feel-good Amélie is a lively, fanciful charmer, showcasing Audrey Tautou as its delightful heroine.

[21] Alan Morrison from Empire magazine gave Amélie five stars and called it "one of the year's best, with crossover potential along the lines of Cyrano de Bergerac (1990) and Il Postino (1994).

"[23] The film was attacked by critic Serge Kaganski of Les Inrockuptibles for an unrealistic and picturesque vision of a bygone French society with few ethnic minorities.

[24] Jeunet dismissed the criticism by pointing out that the photo collection contains pictures of people from numerous ethnic backgrounds, and that Jamel Debbouze, who plays Lucien, is of Moroccan descent.

[40] On 23 August 2013, composer Dan Messe, one of the founders and members of the band Hem, confirmed speculation that he would be writing the score for a musical adaptation of Amélie, collaborating with Craig Lucas and Nathan Tysen.

[45] The production started its pre-Broadway engagement at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles in December 2016, with Phillipa Soo in the title role.

Jeunet has distanced himself from the musical due to his distaste for the art form, saying he only sold the rights to raise funds for children's charity "Mécénat Chirurgie Cardiaque [fr]".

[52] For the 2007 television show Pushing Daisies, a "quirky fairy tale", American Broadcasting Company (ABC) sought an Amélie feel, with the same chords of "whimsy and spirit and magic".

The scientist who named it said: "This new species of glass frog is for Amélie, protagonist of the extraordinary movie Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain; a film where little details play an important role in the achievement of joie de vivre; like the important role that glass frogs and all amphibians and reptiles play in the health of our planet".