Probably the most acclaimed French-language film since the director’s own Delicatessen, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s delightful if insubstantial Amelie has enraptured critics at home and abroad with its easygoing charm and immense ‘feelgood factor’, and may represent a career high-point for its creator, director and co-writer.

Jeunet is best remembered to date for his critically and commercially well-received collaborations with Marc Caro, but Amelie marks an undeniable departure in style: its tone is immeasurably lighter and more cheerful than anything Jeunet has yet put his name to.

‘I had done Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children with Marc Caro,’ explains Jeunet, ‘and when you work with someone it’s imposssible to get certain personal emotions into a piece. So after The City of Lost Children I decided to separate and do something of my own. I wanted to get a smile. That was the rule of the game.’

Jeunet’s last film, 1997’s Alien:Resurrection, marked his first Hollywood outing. Despite its mixed success, the director remains proud of the finished film and recalls its making fondly.

“Hollywood was a great experience. Obviously every day you have to fight against the studio for the studio – it’s a strange game, but it was amazing. I’m ready to do another one if they offer me something interesting. In Europe we think that in Hollywood you are a slave, but I had complete artistic control. The biggest restriction was about money, which I can understand because a science-fiction movie can be very expensive. It can explode. I’m very proud of the film. I don’t want to change anything.

“The genesis of Amelie was a strange process: I tried for a few months to write a script before making Alien, but it was impossible because I had six subjects instead of one. I make lists and I just had too many anecdotes and stories I wanted to include. After Alien I began to work on this idea again, and suddenly I found this idea about a woman helping other people. After that, things just kept getting easier.”

Where do the stories in the film come from?

“They are all true. They’re my life. There was just one story I didn’t use: it was about a rockabilly who gets his quiff stuck between the doors of a subway train. The train is full and he is too ashamed to move, so he stays like that until the doors open at the next stop. Maybe I will use the story in my next movie. We did invent some stories, like for example, the one with the gnome going around the world. I’ve heard this a lot of times, it’s like a rumour. But the story about the photograph album is a real story. A friend had a collection exactly like in the film, and he found the guy exactly like in the film.”

Jeunet’s praise for co-writer Guillerme Laurant is so effusive it sounds like a declaration of undying romantic love.

“It’s very important to find the right person, because it’s like being in a couple in love in real life. You have to be much more than friends because you’re going to play ping-pong together. He wrote the dialogue for a scene and I’d do the visuals. When his stuff wasn’t perfect I’d say ‘Oh, you lost the spirit’, and in 20 minutes I’d have a different version.”

Lead actress Audrey Tautou has drawn universally rave reviews (as well as Bardot, Beart and Hepburn comparisons) for her portrayal of heroine Amelie: the role, however, was originally written for Emily Watson. Jeunet explains the situation.

“When you write a script it is good to think about an actress as a guide. I thought about Breaking The Waves because Bess (the character played by Watson) could be Amelie. When I asked Emily Watson if she wanted to do the film, she told me ‘Yes, yes. I love the script.’ We did some tests in French, but she wasn’t very good because she doesn’t speak French. So I thought ‘OK, I’m going to write another version in English’. I justified this by making the character a small girl growing up in a suburb of London; when she becomes a teenager, she moves to Paris. Later Emily told me that for personal reasons she did not want to do the film. I was very disappointed. I then looked for an actress in France, I saw only two women, and the first one was Audrey Tautou. I am very happy now. She did just one big film in France as a central character: it was called Venus Beaute (directed by Tonie Marshall). We have no stars in France but I think she will be one; she is so inventive and she has a great sense of timing. She can also play a character unlike herself, and that’s pretty rare with young people in France. I don’t know why, it might be something to do with their schooling. She also has this great, expressive face, with big hair and big eyes.”

The film is set in 1997 and the death of Diana Spencer plays a pivotal role in the film: how does Jeunet recall that event?

“I was in the States when the accident happened and I was shocked when I came back to Paris. The exploitation of the accident by the press! Oh my God! Everybody wanted to win money with the accident, and I was very upset. That was the reason I used it. Also, Mother Teresa died two days later and nobody cared, but she also helped people. Maybe even more so than Lady Di.”

The film possesses a child-like sense of wonder: how easy was it to get into that frame of mind?

“Jean Cocteau said we are children inside a big person. I think I’ve stayed a child. A lot of people completely lose the spirit of childhood, I don’t know why, but for me it’s natural. I play like Amelie a lot of the time. For example, the game she does with the blue arrow on the street, I do that in my flat to guide my wife as a gift. Like I say, I love this kind of game. For me it’s natural. So there’s a part of me in Amelie. When Rufus, who plays the father of Amelie, saw the film for the first time, he told me ‘You are Amelie’ and I said ‘Oh yes’. Don’t ask me why she is a girl, though, it just felt right. I remember when I lost Emily Watson, I asked myself, ‘Why not cast Matthieu Kassovitz?’ and I went ‘Oh no, it will be much better with a girl.”

The film was a huge popular hit in France, but has drawn some criticism from tetchy ‘politically correct’ critics, a source of especial anger to Jeunet.

“Let me tell you something: we had more than 400 amazing reviews, and six bad reviews. I am ready to sign for the rest of my life for these kinds of reviews. But we had one very, very bad review, because this guy, Serge Kaganski, has hated me from the beginning. We got the same thing from him with The City of Lost Children. According to him, I am a fascist, because there are no black guys and no gay people in Amelie and we must show gay people and black guys. Despite what Kaganski thinks, Liberation (left-leaning French broadsheet) did a huge article about how the film has been embraced by the left and the right. It’s not a question of politics, everybody loves this film because it’s a positive story. You can be from the right or the left – and there’s not a huge difference in France, believe me – and feel better after seeing it.”