Character Analysis
Amélie works at the Two Windmills (the Café des 2 Moulins in French) with a host of colorful supporting characters. We have Suzanne, the owner, who walks with a limp because the man she loved dropped her during a trapeze act. (We're not making this up).
Waiting tables is Gina, whose grandma was a healer. Gina can often be seen in the background helping customers with aches and pains by massaging them or cracking their bones. One of the regulars is Hipolito, a failed writer. His book is about "a guy who keeps a journal, not about his past, but about disasters in his future. So he gets depressed and does nothing." We'd read it. Then there's another regular, Philomène, a flight attendant who takes Amélie's dad's gnome on the adventure of a lifetime. Amélie cat-sits for her.
Finally, we have the two most interesting characters in the café: Georgette, the tobacconist, and Joseph, the… well, we're not sure what he is.
Georgette is a hypochondriac, complaining about migraines one day, sciatica the next.
"I almost coughed up my pleura last night," she says at one point, sending us online to look up what a pleura is. Joseph once dated Gina. They broke up, and now he spies on her, popping bubble wrap under his table. He verbally takes notes on her every move into a tape recorder.
In order to help Georgette with her hypochondria and to get Joseph off Gina's case, Amélie ends up hooking the two crazy kids up. For a while, it works. Joseph is nice. He smiles. He doesn't taunt Hipolito or make crude remarks about Gina. Georgette perks up, and she isn't sick anymore.
But it isn't to be. These two return to their old ways by the end of the movie. Even so, they found happiness, even if just for a short period of time.