Amelie

People are weird, and Amelie explores that idea to wonderful effect.

I first heard of Amelie in a Design School class.  They showed a clip from the start of the movie that describes Amelie's parents.  I can't remember if the lesson I was supposed to take away from the clip was that people are weird or that you can tell a fairly full story with a few short descriptions of some interesting characters.  

In any case, the whole film is filled with short interjections giving life to all of the characters.  Most of them are fairly small and inconsequential, but they each build the humanness and weirdness of the characters.  For instance, in one scene, Amelie is watching a movie, and she mentions to us that she likes to turn around in the dark to see everyone's faces.  The love stories in the movie (personal, platonic, and romnatic) all revolve around weird eccentricities.

In that sense, I think that the movie does a good job of building empathy.  It's harder to complain about someone else's interesting nuances when you realize that weirdness is ubiquitous.