colour red, prevalent throughout the film, are reminiscent of Lamorisse’s Le Balloon Rouge (1956). Jeunet even admittedly borrowed the title for his film from Guitry’s Destin Fabulux de Desiree Clary (1942), with the use of voiceover also recalling the same film. Montmartre as a setting is connected to Truffat’s 400 Coups (1959), and Claire Mauier-Madame Suzanne-having a role in both films, further establishes a bond. In addition to Claire Maurier, Mathieu Kassovitz-Nino Quicompoix-also has significant ties to French cinema. Jeunet employs the compressed zoom to focus on Amélie multiple times through the film. With using the compressed zoom, alongside the casting of Kassovitch, Kassovitch’s film, La Haine (1995),which made famous use of the zoom, is nodded to. Referencing the films of Marcel Carne, Jeunet highlights the artificial reality of Amélie. Carne’s films were not filmed on location, but on constructed sound stages, thus Carne’s City of Paris was entirely an artifice. Jeunet drew inspiration from the sets of Carne. In aiming to recreate Carne’s fiction on location, the unreality of Amélie’s Paris is heightened by the irony of filming on location, but physically and digitally modifying the shots, to recreate Carne’s artifice. Jeunet’s emphasis on the unreality of Amélie is furthered by his contrasting of Amélie’s stylised world and the spectator’s reality: “Because an excess of originality affects reception adversely, one must know how to use signs that are dispensable-or already familiar to the ambient milieu-to be understood.” Beyond the references to French cinema, with the familiarity of advertising aesthetics, highly stylised visuals of Amélie are juxtaposed by actual events tied to the reality of the audience: the death of Princess Diana. In situating his film around a real event tethered to a specific time-August 31st, 1997-Jeunet creates a temporal references that encourages an anachronistic viewing of the “retro” aesthetics of his film.>