by SARAH ROWLAND

Every story you read about Audrey Tautou invariably starts with a paragraph devoted to how she is just as spellbindingly cute in person as she is on the big screen. This article is no exception.

When I take her child-like hand in my meaty paw, my gaze is met with the liquid black eyes of Amélie, the mischievous imp from the movie of the same title. I'm star struck but I'm also dumbstruck by her overly plain attire. France's hottest export since Juliette Binoche is wearing a baggy grey T-shirt in a paltry attempt to disguise her porcelain beauty. She's clearly trying to look like an everyday girl and she's failing miserably. I've never seen skin like white marble before or raven hair that shines as a separate entity. And her smallness fills the room and makes everything else in it seem oafish and awkward in comparison, including me. I'm not a big person, mind you, but next to her daintiness I'm a clodhopper with elephantiasis.

As she curls up in her chair like a Siamese, I feel my hips press up against the arm rests and wonder where she's finding all that extra space to pretzel her body into feline folds. She languidly pours a cool glass of water from a jug beside her. Although I'm freakishly thirsty, I resist reaching for the H20 for fear it will take a giant shoe horn to wedge me out of my seat. The last thing I want to do is walk across Audrey Tautou's hotel room with a chair stuck to my ass. So dry mouthed and growing wider by the minute, I begin the interview.

Escaping Amélie

The purpose of our little Q&A sesh at Montreal's Sofitel hotel is to discuss A Very Long Engagement, her first collaboration with director Jean-Pierre Jeunet since their monumental 2001 hit Amélie. And she wants to make one thing clear: they had no intention of trying to recapture that magic with their latest film.

"It was such a miracle," says the 26 year old, who started landing roles shortly after she won best young actress in the Jeune Comedien de Cinema Festival in 1998. Speaking in a polite tone that intimates she's all business and no Amélie, she elaborates, "We were so blessed the first time that we knew it wouldn't happen again a second time so we didn't try. And I know him [Jeunet]. He would have felt imprisoned if we were just making a part two of something. We are just interested in artistic things and that's why we love working together. We both like to dive deep into new experiences."

A very long film

The experience this time round is a two and a half hour WWI epic. Tautou plays the determined polio stricken Mathilde, who limps all over Paris in search of her missing fiancé. Presumed dead, her betrothed Manech (as played by the adorable Gaspard Ulliel) hasn't been seen since he and five other soldiers were tossed into no man's land as punishment for self-mutilation. Along the way she meets some of the other grieving widows, including Elodie (as played by the incomparable Jodie Foster) whose saucy bit-part adds just the right amount of spice to an otherwise sugary sweet love story.

While the plot differs greatly from Amélie, which is about a rascally little prankster vigilante, Jeunet's sensibility doesn't. Once again, he gives Tautou a private universe of sumptuous composition and set design, and she's free to explore every facet of her own cuteness inside it. He also whips out some familiar tricks, like introducing a string of characters by rewinding their individual bios in two-minute flashback montages as Tautou narrates. While there are some similarities between Amélie and Mathilde (they're both equally persevering and playful), Tautou feels her latest character demanded more of her as an actress.

"I realized through Mathilde that I was very implicated in Amélie," she says. "Mathilde, who is suffering and sad, is far from my natural mood, so I had to come closer to her and concentrate on my part more. I was basically in my own bubble."

Force field forever

Creating a mental force field is nothing new to Tautou. She managed to shelter herself from media attention as much as possible when Amélie exploded on an international level after receiving five Oscar nominations.

"It took me a long time to realize what happened," she says. "I was not aware of the success. I was inside the eye of the twister so for me it seemed normal. And I've never had the feeling that the North American interest was serious or concrete because it seemed more like a fashion fad than anything else. I didn't understand that it was unusually fast because I didn't have anything or anybody to compare it with, and I still don't."

Perhaps this is because she rarely reads about herself?

"I'm too sensitive to hear about something bad," she admits. "It would give me too much worries and I'm not strong enough to handle that. For this movie I've read three, maybe four reviews and I don't remember what they said. I'm not really interested in knowing. I can't behave depending on other people's opinions of me."

Star sprite

Her discomfort with talking about herself and her work makes for a challenging interview, something she is sympathetic to.

"I feel sorry for people [who are interviewing me] because I don't really like to analyze myself," she says sincerely as I scratch the remaining questions off my list and wrap up our meeting. "I just don't have the answers so it's not a question of me not wanting to talk about something; it's more that I can't intellectualize my work".

This is a tough thing to hear from the subject of your front page feature and I'll confess it bugged me a little. That's when she suddenly squeaks, "Can I take a picture of you?" and Audrey Tautou, serious actress, snaps instantly into Super-Amélie. The sophisticated, almost stentorian tone of her voice skyrockets by at least two octaves and the gamine pixie we all fell in love with is snapping my picture. And I'm delighted! I think about folding her up and seeing if she'll fit into my back pocket. This, I realize, is the blast of charisma that makes mortals melt, and makes actresses into stars.

A Very Long Engagement opens Friday, Dec. 17

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