Amélie Poulain

Probably everybody knows about the film Le fabuleux destin d’Amelie Poulain, the French movie that had great success around the world collecting many awards and recognitions.

The film narrates the story about an innocent cute girl from Montmartre who finds a little box and decides to look for its owner. That happening makes her see that she wants to help people and change their lives. But how has that fiction movie changed Parisian’s lives in reality?

The popularity of the film caused a deep impact in the district in which it was set. Many locations of the movie such as the Café Tabac des deux moulins and the market de la Butte, have become a must see for the visitors of Montmartre. The tourists die for living in their own skins the feeling of sipping a coffee at the bar where Amelie worked or taking a photo at the market where Lucien was abused by his boss.

The curiosity is that neither the bar nor the market where created for the film. Both places existed before the shooting and were real business directed by real people.

The bar is still exactly the same as it is seen in the movie, so everybody can go there and find even the same decorations and furniture that you once saw in the film. The only thing that has changed in there are the prices: now they are much higher than before the production!

The owner of the market is Ali McDoughy; the man who never imagined that one day he would become the most famous Café seller of the city. At the back shop, McDoughy keeps every newspaper article in which he has appeared, since many media and journalists interviewed him after his business appeared on the big screen and became such a big boom.

And guess what our next blog post will be about….would you like feeling part of a movie?