Rosaline Ham’s novel The Dressmaker and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s film Amelie both capture the idea of people getting what they want out of life: be it love, power, acceptance or revenge. The ambitions of the characters are shown through the use of character, colours, shots, settings and language techniques. Ham’s Teddy McSwiney and Jeunet’s Nino Quincampoix are looking for love, as is Amelie Poulain, who is also after acceptance, alongside Tilly Dunnage of The Dressmaker. Both texts explore the idea of having power, and the want for power to be destroyed through Collignon and Lucien in Amelie, and Evan and Marigold Pettyman and Percival and Irma Almanac in The Dressmaker. The central characters of the two texts, Tilly and Amelie, both share a common …show more content…
Almanac and Collignon, who all have a position of power and for others to achieve what they want they must overcome the powerful authority oppressing them. Pettyman has control of the town of Dungatar as the councillor but he also, just as Mr. Almanac and Collignon do, has control over one particular person; be it their wives or staff. Euphemisms are used in The Dressmaker to explain to the reader in a subtle way the “brutal men” in power, as Irma and Molly Dunnage describe them. Brutality is seen in broad daylight and the disgust portrayed when surrounding characters condemn Mr. Collignon who “shouldn’t do that”, causes the audience to find it distasteful rather than funny. Lucien, as Irma and Marigold do, have to wait for, or cause, their abusers to lose their power so they can gain their freedom. The description of the lighting in the settings of the deaths of the men by Ham, as well as the lighting and camera angles used by Jeunet, take the audience on an emotional vendetta, for the justification received by the characters, as the techniques influence and stir angry and righteousness in the audience. Mr. Almanac’s shop is “gloomy” as he dies while his wife “[dozes] in the sun” showing the shift in the power and spotlight in their relationship. This power shift is also seen in Amelie when Collignon is receiving punishment for his treatment of Lucien. The camera …show more content…
The use of settings in the novel and film are used as a visual representation of Tilly and Amelie’s isolation. Tilly is “detached” at the top of hill but able to “[see] everything”, just as Amelie is in her high positioned apartment that overlooks the unfairness in Raymond Dufayel and Lucien’s lives. They experience detachment in different ways, with Amelie growing up “deprived of playmates”, never learning the social skills necessary to enter society, and Tilly being isolated, for being “the dangerous one” and sent away from the society at a young age. They are after the approval of everyone around them as the women “want them to [be] like[d]” by society but “[they] can’t relate to other people”. The yearning for acceptance both characters possess is shown through different techniques due to the different media types. Amelie’s emotions are manifested into actions in her ‘real world’, where as Tilly’s are displayed as normal human reaction and it is her dialogue that tells the audience how she feels. The surreal stories displayed by the news on Amelie’s television is the manifestation of her dramatic emotions and imagination whilst Tilly simply snaps that “no…I’ll [have to] get used to them”. The “Madonna of the unloved” and the “strange woman” are “in the middle, yet on the outside” of the societies: the centre of gossip but on the outside of