Act I
Young and imaginative Amélie feels isolated and emotionally distant from her parents. One day, she gets so excited to see her father, a doctor, that her heart races and he misdiagnoses her with a heart condition. Her paranoid parents begin to homeschool her and cut off all contact with the outside world. In a lesson with her mother, Amélie imagines her goldfish, Fluffy, coming alive and speaking to her. When Amélie allows Fluffy to jump out of his bowl, her parents panic and force her to release Fluffy into the Seine, leaving her alone. Amandine takes Amélie to Notre Dame to pray for guidance on how to deal with her daughter and hope for a son. When they leave the cathedral, Amandine is crushed and killed by a suicidal tourist who jumped from the top of the building. The death hits her father hard, and he builds a shrine to his dead wife featuring a garden gnome she always hated.
Years pass, Amélie becomes bored with her quiet life and distant father, and she decides to leave home. Five years later, she is a waitress at a café in Paris. She has a quiet, happy life, and spends her time with her three co-workers: Suzanne, the café’s owner and a past circus performer, Georgette, a hypochondriac, and Gina, whose husband left her. Some of Amélie’s regular customers include Gina’s ex-boyfriend Joseph, Hipolito, a poet, and Philomene, an air hostess.
On the night of Princess Diana’s death, Amélie discovers a box of childhood treasures belonging to the man who used to own her apartment. She is determined to anonymously deliver the box to him, and if he is touched by her gesture, she resolves that she will become an anonymous do-gooder. She first meets with a cranky grocer who used to live in her apartment, Collignon, and his fruit-obsessed assistant Lucien. Collignon tells Amélie to confer with his parents on the other side of town.
At the train station, Amélie spots a man her age, Nino, who she is attracted to. However, the train arrives before she can introduce herself to him. From Collignon’s parents, Amélie learns the surname of the box’s owner: Bredoteau. When she returns to the train station, Nino spots her on the street, noticing how pretty she is and finds himself intrigued with the box.
Time passes, and Amélie’s search for Bredoteau isn’t working out. One day, she speaks to her neighbor, Julien Dufayel—an artist who suffers from a brittle bone disease, giving him the nickname ‘The Glass Man.’ He tells her that Bredoteau is the incorrect name. The man was really called BreTOdeau. Dufayel then shows Amélie his recreation of the painting The Luncheon of the Boating Party, remarking on Amélie’s isolation.
Amélie discovers Bretodeau in the phonebook and calls him from a payphone, telling him where he can pick up the box. When Bretodeau finds it, he reflects on his childhood and decides to call his ex-wife and arrange to meet their son. Taking it as a sign, Amélie continues her good deeds, taking a blind beggar on a tour of the streets of Paris, describing his surroundings in detail.
Later that night, Amélie has a strange dream where she imagines her lavish funeral in the style of Princess Diana’s, where she is serenaded by Elton John.
