Amelie, a young waitress in Paris, nearly faints from shock when she hears that Diana has been killed in an automobile accident. This brief spell leads to the discovery of a tin box full of childhood treasures hidden away many years before behind some tiles in Amelie’s bathroom.

Amelie vows to track down the owner of these boyhood personal trinkets. She tells herself that if she can find the owner and he is moved by the gesture she will devote her life to doing good deeds. She may not have the power to influence lives a la Diana, but perhaps she can improve the mood in her little corner of Paris. She succeeds in finding the collector of the childhood trophies by ardently following clues that could only pan out in the movies. He is profoundly touched by the reunion. Amelie’s career as a Lady Beneficent is launched!

As she embarks on her adventures in romance and happiness, we know just how important it is for her to cultivate love and affection, for others as well as herself. Amelie opens with a hilarious and poignant montage of Amelie’s early life.

An exaggeratedly serious sounding narrator recounts the sad childhood of Amelie. Her father, a doctor, is a cold, stand-offish man who indulged in no displays of affection with his young child. So, when it comes time for her annual physicals, she becomes so agitated while being examined that her heart races. Her father misdiagnoses a heart condition and dictates that she be educated at home and kept quiet to protect her health. Her mother dies when she is quite young. She spends much of her young life alone, creating her own world of fantasies and dreams.

All this sounds grim, but the lively and amusing way it is presented creates the opposite effect. Few movies accomplish such an atmosphere of warmth, humor and romance while depicting such mischievous goings on. Her best prank is stealing a garden gnome from her father’s garden and fooling him into thinking that the gnome is traveling the world, sending home postcards to taunt his gardener. Amelie hopes her father will take the trips he’s always dreamed of, and this is her way of convincing him.

Amelie is peppered with little moments of magical realism, the kind of flights of fancy that delighted audiences in Like Water for Chocolate but with the humor and edginess of the witty asides in Run Lola Run. When Amelie sees the young man of her dreams in her café, she melts, literally, and splashes on the floor in a puddle. In real life, clouds sometimes look like shapes. In Amelie, clouds float overhead more perfectly suggestive of shapes than generally happens in the real world.

Director Jeunet is famous for creating dazzling visual realities in films like Delicatessen and City of Lost Children. While his dynamic visual style has won him a cult following, his stories tend to be difficult and misshapen. Amelie is a remarkable leap forward.

Jeunet and co-screenwriter Guillaume Laurant have crafted a touching fable that is perfectly suited for the visual styling that is Jeunet’s trademark. The screenplay is a deft balance of humor and suffering, and it gives Amelie the quality of feeling like a very intimate story expressing very universal truths. The screenplay deserves its somewhat unexpected Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

And a story of selfless good deeds is a much better vehicle for such inviting visual virtuosity. Amelie, though triggered by a very specific event which places the picture in the late 90s, has a timeless fantasy land feel that is also as comfortable and comforting as your favorite pajamas. These qualities are so marked that Amelie has Oscar nominations for Best Cinematogra-phy, Best Art Direction, and Best Sound.

But all the talent present in Amelie would be wasted if the all important quirky heroine wasn’t embodied by just the right actress. And Amelie’s enormous success all over the world can be attributed to the devastating charm of Amelie, perfectly embodied by Audrey Tatou.

Tatou has been in other films, but this is her star-making role. She has been compared to Audrey Hepburn, and not just because they share a name. They share many of the same physical qualities. Both are pale, dark-haired gamines who exude what should be an oxymoron, a knowing innocence. Both have long legs and a twinkle in the eye. Hepburn in real life and in many films seems to have the same enormous sensitivity to the feelings and sufferings of others that Amelie bears like a cross. In Amelie, Tatou dons many costumes. Seeing her in dark sunglasses with her hair bound up in a scarf eerily recalls a trademark Hepburn look.

Amelie wants to help others, but she isn’t completely self-interested. She has had lousy luck in love, but she develops a big crush on one of the souls she is trying to help. Nino is a hottie as quirky as she is, played by Mathieu Kassovitz who is best known as a director. His film La Haine, an honest and brutal depiction of racial tension in France, created a stir several years ago. Amelie is about as far from La Haine as possible.

Even after she melts for Nino, Amelie can scarcely admit her attraction. Having had little luck with love, she insists that they be brought together by good deeds and serendipity. She is only reluctantly a romantic soul.

If you find Valentine’s Day a tiring commercialized holiday, Amelie is a bracing tonic, fresher and more satisfying than chocolate and flowers.