Amelie Response An idee fixe is an idea or desire that dominates the mind; an obsession. Usually a minor fixation where the average person had a strong like or dislike about a specific thing. From the moment the film Amelie starts the narrator talks about Amelie’s dysfunctional family and all their bizarre idee fixe . Her parents are odd people, as detailed in their "likes" and "dislikes" by the narrator which later causes Amelie to develop some fixations of her own.
Amelie’s father Raphael was an emotionless man. He dislikes peeing next to someone, catching scornful glances at his sandals, and clingy wet swimming trunks. He really likes to peel large strips off wallpaper, emptying out his tool box, cleaning it out, and putting everything back. Amelie’s mother Amandine is a schoolmistress with a nervous tic in her eye. Amandine has an fixaton with figure skaters costume on TV, polishing the parquet, emptying her handbag, cleaning it out, and putting everything back. She dislikes puckered fingers in the bath, having her hands touched by strangers and finally pillow marks on her cheeks in the morning. Amandine was killed when a woman committing suicide landed on her. From that day Amelie’s father developed a new idee fixe, he became obsessed with building a shrine to her ashes . Amelie's father gave her yearly check-ups, and his nearness made her so nervous (because he was not demonstrative in their love, and Amelie wanted to be hugged) that her heart would beat very fast. So, Amelie's father diagnosed her with a heart problem, and because of that she wasn't sent to school like other kids but was instead taught at home. Amelie grew up and still seeked solitude, she amuses herself with silly questions about the world below such as, “how many couples are having an orgasm now?” She cultivates a taste for small pleasures like dipping her hands into sacks of grain.