Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Never let go, 22 April 2007
Sure, the name is an open target for dumb jokes. But Sébastien Japrisot's haunting romance "A Very Long Engagement" translates well onto the big screen, with a bit of help from "Amelie" director Jean-Pierre Jeunet and the wonderful Audrey Tautou.
Mathilde (Audrey Tautou) is a pretty young girl who was left crippled by polio, and is being raised by her uncle and aunt. Before World War I, she fell in love with a boy called Manech (Gaspard Ulliel), but he was sent to the war and killed. Three years later, Mathilde gets a mysterious letter with shocking news: Manech was not killed in action, but condemned to death by being sent unarmed to the front lines -- and miraculously, he might still be alive.
Mathilde is determined to find her lover -- dead or alive -- and learn what really happened on that day three years ago. So she puts out ads in the papers, gathers accounts, and hires a detective to follow the cold trail. And slowly the gaps in the stories emerge, giving Mathilde clues to whether Manech died... and where he might be now.
"A Very Long Engagement" (French title: "Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles") diddles a few details from the novel, but is faithful to it in the ways that matter -- the "MMM" inscriptions, the non-linear storytelling, the horrors of World War I. In some ways, it seems almost impossible to transfer onto film without creating a pretentious mess -- but it wasn't.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet proves that "Amelie" was no fluke, but this time he relies mostly on visual artistry, rather than in magical realism. He also reminds us, by displaying the French countryside along with flashbacks of the front lines, that war is stupid and wasteful. But it's not an obvious, slam-in-your-face reminder. Like the romance, it's delicate and wistful.
The only problem with "A Very Long Engagement" is the "long" part -- it's truly exquisite, but it does drag a bit. Since it can be summed up as "girl searches for her seemingly dead lover," there are only a few twists along the way. But the beautiful visuals may make up for that in part. The cinematography by Bruno Delbonnel is particularly striking, tinted in sepia or black and white. The entire movie has the feeling of an old photograph brought to life.
The love between Manech and Mathilde is not a grand passion, but it is a very real love -- it's not implausible to believe that two such people might have existed. Tautou is sweetly elfin as Mathilde, creating a likable heroine that it's impossible not to root for. Ulliel gives an equally good performance as the boyish, naive Manech, a perfect match for Mathilde.
"A Very Long Engagement" is a truly beautiful follow-up to the magical "Amelie" -- a war story, a love story, and a mystery all in one. Enchanting.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great French war epic, 9 Dec 2008
This is one of the most underrated movies in recent times.
It tells the story of a young woman trying to find he fate of her fiancee who died in the French trenches in WW1.
Beautifully shot mostly in location plus some studio-trench shots , the open French country side provides a perfect background for the story.
The plot is excellent and the movie never looses pace ,I had to watch ot twice as it can be a little slow to understand with subtitles.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Woman after the war, 6 Nov 2007
A Very Long Engagement does a surprisingly deft job of balancing the absurdities and horrors of war with the absurdities of everyday life and the tenuous nature of hope and history, both ever changing and prey to the unbalancing influence of the smallest detail. More than most, this is really a film about the enduring pains of war that linger long after the last shots are fired and the battlefields are grown over as Mathilde's journey for her lost love goes from hospitals to widows to cripples to the thousands of official forms that once meant life or death. It's here that the film's lavish budget is really felt, allowing the story to span a wounded country eager to forget but unable to, as well as recreating the front lines. The reconstruction of the trench scenes is similarly impressive, although, as in Jasprisot's novel, the attitude of the poilous is much more sympathetic than it would have been in reality (deserters and self-inflicted wound cases were widely hated by soldiers at the front, who generally felt they should take their chances alongside them).
Its use of narration pays dividends, establishing that each of the five condemned man has a life and people that care about them. It's still done with Jeunet's characteristic quirkiness and black visual humor, but that's all too the good. And while there are some similarities, Tatou is not exactly Amelie here, all-too-ready to dismiss a helpful source as a slut in her own small-minded determination. The little games she plays with fate might seem whimsical, but she loses as many as she wins. Even the ending that proved so unacceptable for US audiences by opting for neither an obviously happy/unhappy ever after ending is just right, leaving its characters in limbo but not without hope.
A final touch of absurdity is added by Jeunot's audio commentary, where he complains over the end credits that despite spending more money by filming in France with French cast and crew entirely in the French language, the film was met with astonishing hostility by the French film industry which immediately declared it a foreign film and moved that it be forced to repay it's small government subsidy and be ruled ineligible for all French awards. I guess now he knows how George Stevens felt after being persuaded to shoot The Greatest Story Ever Told with a US crew in Monument Valley instead of cheaper foreign shores now only to be ridiculed and abused by the industry for his troubles... In filmmaking, like war, nothing really changes.
Although the one-disc version does include an audio commentary, it's definitely worth springing for the two-disc version for the 73-minute documentary and deleted scenes instead.
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