What's Up With the Ending?

What's Up With the Ending?

Fin

After leading Nino on a trip through Montmartre that would make Billy from The Family Circus dizzy, Amélie still can't get up the nerve to talk to the dude. Gina the waitress tells Nino where to find her, and Amélie gets a special video message like a Tyramail from Dufayel telling her to stop hiding and to go for it—it being Nino, the cutest boy in Paris.

So Amélie opens her apartment door, and boom, there he is. What follows is the most romantic kiss ever in the history of movies—take that, Spider-Man upside-down kiss in the rain—and Amélie and Nino zip off on the back of his motorbike, laughing and enjoying the day.

We also get a glimpse at how Amélie's good deeds have affected some of the minor characters in the film. Her dad gets his gnome back and decides to go on a trip of his own. Bretodeau shares a chicken (his favorite food) with his grandson. Dufayel starts a new painting. And Hipolito, the failed writer, sees one of his quotes scrawled as Banksy-style graffiti onto a wall—"Without you, today's emotions would be the scurf of yesterday's." We're not sure who put it there—Amélie herself or the train conductor she whispers the quote to—or even what a "scurf" is, but it puts a spring in Hipolito's step that he probably hasn't had in years.

At one point in the final scene, as Amélie and Nino are riding their bike, they both look directly into the camera, as if they're looking at all the viewers out there and asking, "What are you going to do for someone else today?"

Well, what are you going to do?