As I’m probably the last person in the world to know first-hand, Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain is a delightfully charming happy film. It doesn’t particularly feel French to me, but it is very much non-American, or at least non-Hollywood. A Hollywood version of this would have to be cynical, even if it still had a happy ending; this isn’t cynical at all.
The translation is curious, though, at least the one I saw (the English subtitles on the Region 1 DVD release). A quote shows up several times in the movie; the last time we see it written, thankfully.
Sans toi, les émotions d’aujourd’ hiu me seraient que la peau morte des emotions d’autrefois — Hipolito
That may not be quite right — it’s hand-written, and I don’t read French so the normal context clues don’t help much for a couple ambiguous letterforms.
The English translation given is
Without you, today’s emotions would be the scurf of yesterday’s.
“Scurf”? What’s “scurf” mean? Evidentally it means ‘dead skin‘, but it’s not a word I knew. Did I just have a shocking hole in my vocabulary, or did the translator choose to use a truly uncommon word? If the latter, was it an intentional choice?
(And for the record, Audrey Tautou is shockingly cute and obviously of elfish descent.)
While I’m on the subject, why is it that my name gender detector fails so routinely French names? “Raphaël” is obviously male, as is “Claude”, while “Dominique” is just as obviously female. Except that I’m wrong on all of those.