A good prompter in each cellar window whispering cutting retorts would mean shy people had the last laugh. At least you'll never be a vegetable.

Amelie doesn't have a boyfriend. She tried once or twice, but the results were a let-down. Instead, she cultivates a taste for small pleasures. Plunging her hand deep into a sack of grain. Cracking creme brulee with a teaspoon. And skimming stones on the Canal St. Martin.

All he likes is popping bubble wrap.

In such a dead world, Amelie prefers to dream until she's old enough to leave home.

Amelie has one friend, Blubber. Alas, the home environment has made Blubber suicidal.

September 28th 1997. It is exactly 11am. At the funfair, near the ghost train, the marshmallow twister is twisting. Meanwhile, on a bench in Villette Square, Felix Lerbier learns there are more links in his brain than atoms in the universe. Meanwhile, at the Sacre Cœur, the nuns are practicing their backhand. The temperature is 24°C, humidity 70%, atmospheric pressure 999 millibars.

Any normal girl would call the number straightaway, meet him at a café to return the album. Then she would know if her dream was viable. It's called a reality check, but it's the last thing Amélie wants.

Like Don Quixote, she pitted herself against the grinding windmill of all life's miseries. It was a losing battle that claimed her life too soon.

Deprived of playmates, tossed about between a neurotic and an iceberg, Amelie retreats into her imagination.

Time has changed nothing. Amelie still takes refuge in solitude.

Amandine takes Amelie to Notre Dame to light a candle and pray for a baby brother. Three minutes later, heaven sends, alas, not a baby boy, but Marguerite, a tourist from Quebec, bent on ending her life. Amandine Poulain is killed instantly.