Wednesday 3 June '09: Next stop, next week: Amelie's Paris

With the wind in their hair, the fabulous Amelie (Audrey Tautou) is off to find her destiny in Paris with Nino (Mathieu Kassovitz) at the wheel of a scooter. Will they breakfast on croissants and coffee at a cafe in Montmatre or crack the brittle topping of a creme brulee somehere on the Left Bank?

This time next week I shall be following in Amelie's footsteps. More or less at this time I shall be awaiting the call to board my Jhb-Paris flight from International Departures at the OR Tambo Airport, Johannesburg. Summertime in the southern hemisphere means conference time in academe. I am off to a deliver a paper at an erudite gathering in Riga, Latvia with a three day personal vacation in Paris.

To complement the information in my guide books, this evening I am going to watch The fabulous destiny of Amelie Poulain once again. If you have never smiled at the sweet quirkiness of our heroine in this 2001 French movie starring Audrey Tautou, you have a treat awaiting you. Amelie is a little lonely waitress at a Montmatre cafe who has a unique view of the world. Engaged in a quest to find the owner of a treasure box of childhood memorabilia which she accidentally stumbles across in her little apartment, Amelie decides to spread happiness to the lonely and eccentric. She plays a mischievous Fairy Godmother distributing random acts of kindness to a collection of odd Parisian characters until she meets her own destiny in the shadow of the Carousel, just below the Sacre le Coeur.

A movie worth seeing set in a city worth visiting - for me, the fourth time!

This award seems designed for me: roses and porcelein. Thank you, Poet Laureate of blogland, Kat!