SNATCH (2000) + AMELIE (2001): masculinity and femininity

The hypermasculine grit of Guy Ritchie's Snatch (2001) is a thin skin laid over something much more complex. Immersed in the violence-ridden underbelly of the city, each character in Snatch puts on a tough face to stay on top of the scuffles that plague their lives. However, this masculine facade really serves to highlight the vulnerability of Snatch's characters. Some gangsters showcase vulnerability through the actors chosen to play them (for instance, the age and implied fragility of Bricktop's physicality, the babyface of Tommy). Others are immersed in details that speak on the contrary to
their tough outer core-- Mickey's tattoos are peppered with hints of femininity and his tenderness and
protectiveness for his mother surfaces repetitively in his plotline. Immersed in Guy Ritchie's dimly lit, unpolished sets and tied together with loosely framed shots and tense anticipatory movements, these elements of Snatch's characters stand out, highlighting the inner delicate parts of his crime-ridden world.






On the contrary, Jean-Pierre Juenet's Amelie (2001) exhibits the opposite circumstance: a world of femininity surrounding a core of masculine attributes. On the surface, the journey of one female character through softly lit, brightly colored, and often tightly framed clear shots seems an easily digestible romance film.

Even though these elements persist through the storyline, even ending in a slow motion shot of Amelie and her new love riding together on a motorcycle, in reality Amelie's character's most important developing attributes are considered very masculine. Amelie's plotlines are all propelled forwards by Amelie's desire to have some form of control or upper hand in the situations she sees around her. Her character largely revolves around serving justice, whether it be giving gifts or punishing others-- a very masculine idea. Her one fear throughout the movie seems to be that she is too fragile for the love she craves-- however, by the end of the film, her main character development is overcoming this fear and seizing the world for her own.
 agency and drive to get what she wants stick out like a sore thumb in the middle of the haze of innocence and naïveté that is used as the lens to view her.