WELCOME to Amlie's magical world. She's a young woman who glides through the streets of Paris as quietly as a mouse.

With wide eyes and a tiny grin, she sees the world in a magical light, discovering minor miracles every day.

A shy and reserved person whose favorite moments are spent alone skimming stones into still water, Amlie was raised by a pair of eccentrics who falsely diagnosed her with a heart problem at the age of six and so limited her exposure to the outside world.

Now a free and independent woman, she wears a bob that curls in every direction and dresses in red.

With a job in a caf and an aptitude for spying on her neighbors, she entertains herself by enacting a series of homemade, kindhearted practical jokes.

She returns a long-forgotten box of childhood knick-knacks to its proper owner, she sends her father's garden troll on a trip around the world, and she creates a love connection at the caf between the hypochondriac druggist and a beer-drinking old grouch.

But when the day is done, she finds one stone unturned, and decides to work her magic on the quirky object of her affections, Nino Quincampoix, who she's never met.

Actress Audrey Tautou's performance as Amlie has taken France by storm and director Jean-Pierre Jeunet has captured the perfect Paris of our imnaginations with this gorgeous and inventive film.

Also opening in Worcester today is British director Tony Scott's Spy Game, with superstars Robert Redford and Brad Pitt as CIA agents taking on the inscrutable Chinese and their own side.

Redford exudes an air of coolness as the old school agent faced with his most dangerous and personal mission rescuing Pitt, his one-time protege, from a Beijing prison where he awaits execution.