This fiction dramatizes the story of the movie, Amelie(2001).
Amelie(2050)
Around 11pm, Amelie, as usual, dabs some perfume behind her ears in her small bathroom. The bathroom door is open and the nighttime news is on the TV in the living room. As the breaking news of Prince William’s death is trickling out from the TV, she stops her gestures and walks towards the living room to watch the news closely. She drops the cap of the perfume bottle on the floor, as she is weak at her left hand. The cap rolls on the floor and hits one of the tiles on the bathroom wall. The tile moves a little and reveals a secret hole. She bends her body to pick the cap up and finds out by instinct that there is something inside the hole. She puts her hand inside and takes out a dusted little treasure box. She blows the dust off the box and opens it carefully. She smiles as she finds some old toys and pictures that were hidden by a boy who lived in this apartment forty years ago. She wants to know about his stories, and wants to return this box to the owner who might have forgotten about the existence of the box. She brings the box out to the living room and puts the toys and photos on the table that can read information of objects instead of using portable screen. However, the box requires matching identification of the original owner. She is disappointed at failing to get information from the box, but she doesn’t want to give up. Next morning, she visits her neighbors who have been living in this apartment for a long time. After meeting some neighbors, she fortunately finds a middle-aged woman who remembers the man Amelie is looking for. It’s been almost thirty years since he moved out from the apartment. She only barely remembers that his family moved out when the boy’s father was died. To trace her memory, she goes into her kitchen where she spends most her times and searches through her drawer to find some objects that she could get some information from. Her kitchen is filled with a lot of objects. Since most objects become a medium to contain so many unique memories and information, the culture of sharing and searching contents using objects are very prevalent these day. So, a lot of people are very obsessed with possessing and collecting objects and she is one of the people. As she finds a little red spice bottle, she makes a gleeful look and calls Amelie to the kitchen. When she put the spice bottle on the surface of her worktop, many handwritten cooking recipes and thumbnails of saved videos displayed on the worktop. She starts explaining about the bottle. When she was the boy’s neighbor, the boy’s mother was famous for her cooking in this town. She was a big fan of her cooking, especially the foods made with special spice, so she often learned the recipe from the boy’s mother. When the boy’s family moved out the apartment, the boy’s mother gave her the red spice bottle that contained the recipes using the special spice and cooking video. The bottle communicated with other objects in her kitchen and with her personal blog and was able to document other recipes. The bottle also contained a video of when she was cooking in the kitchen with her son. Her son liked helping and watching his mom cook. After the boy’s family moved out, she used to communicate and exchange recipes using the bottle. However, eight years ago she founded out that the boy’s mother was died from the spice bottle, and she stored the bottle as a part of her memory in the kitchen. After explaining the histories of the bottle, she plays one of the video that the boy was in with his mother. The boy giggles and waits for the food to get ready in the video. Amelie feels so hungry because of the delicious smell. As she clicks the boy’s face in the video, the information of the boy displays near the video. The young boy was 7years old, and he had become a middle-aged man now. She could call him directly and give him the box, but she wants to hand it to him secretly. She puts the box in front of his apartment, rings the bell and hides in the corner not to be seen by him. A middle-aged man looked very depressed and sad opens a door and looks around. As he doesn’t see anybody to visit him, he turns his body into the door and finds the box that Ameile left for him. He grabs the box and carefully opens it. The box was his treasure box that he had hidden in his bathroom forty years ago. Scalding tears pour down his face. So many memories of his youth are flooded back to him. He sits on his couch, puts away empty cheap vodka bottles and puts each little toy and photo on the table. The box identifies him and displays all the contents from the box. He picks up a green marble from the box and puts on the table. The marble displays photos that he was taken while playing with the marble and names of friends he used to play marbles with. He changes the photo of a frame on the wall to the photo he found from the marble. And he touches each of his friend’s names and sends messages to them. He mutters himself “An angel came to me today.”
I researched about the relationship between objects and people in a specific space. To explore this idea, I wanted to use real people’s story. For this research, I visited my friend’s apartment and asked them about the meaning of each space and object in their apartment. I started with the living room, which is a public space for them. The living room is mostly shared to do entertainment activities such as watching TV and playing games and getting relax. But, sometimes the living room becomes a private space to Min, because when Hoon and Hyun are studying in their rooms, she studies and gets rest in the living room by herself. And I asked them meanings and behind stories of each object in the living room. Each of them has interesting stories and special meanings that are related their friends. Hoon, Min and Hyun have different relationship with the people, so they reminded different stories when they saw the objects. For example, the sofa was received from Dong, Hyun’s ex-boyfriend, makes Hyun remind the sad moment when she cried sitting on the sofa because of Dong. But, whenever Min sees the sofa, she thinks she would really regret if she threw away the sofa. So, she is really satisfied with the sofa. It was really interesting to think about how the same object and space get different meaning to different people and space. This project is still work in progress. 
