A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT (Un long dimanche de fiancailles)
Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten Warner Independent Pictures Grade: B Directed by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet Written by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Guillaume Laurant, novel "Un long dimanche de fiancailles" by Sebastien Japrisot Cast: Audrey Tautou, Graspard Ulliel, Dominique Pinon, Clovis Cornillac, Jerome Kircher, Chantal Neuwirth, Albert Dupontel Screened at: MGM, NYC, 11/17/04
"Amelie" meets "Gallipoli" in an epic drama that alternates between the French infantry's battling in the trenches and a romance that follows the odyssey of a twenty-year-old woman in search of a fiancé who is missing in action and presumed dead. Whatever you may think of the story, which is difficult to follow with so many characters it reminds one of 19th century novels by Dickens and Tolstoy, "A Very Long Engagement" is sure to be short-listed for an Oscar for Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel.
"Un long dimanche de fiancalles," which in French means literally "A long Sunday of engagements" and is the title of Sebastien Japrisot's popular novel, has been adapted by screenwriter-director Jean-Pierre Jeunet into an engaging film whose considerable length of two and one-quarter hours runs us through a maze of assorted characters, some eccentric and lovable, other venal and corrupt. M. Delbonnel's photography is striking, whether he mixes sepia with black-and-white or gives us 3-second spurts of visuals for what the narrator is saying. A restrained use of special effects affords us a stunning image of what Paris looked like in 1920, particularly striking being its huge market places, its broad selection of vendors and customers alike.
While director Jeunet centers the tale on the adorable Mathilde (Audrey Tautou), we get to meet a plethora of characters who are in some way related to five unfortunate French soldiers during the Great War 1914-1918 who had been court-martialed for self-mutilation, and while the charges against them could lead to execution either immediately or after the war, they are sent to a no-man's land where they are almost certain to be killed. One of the men, Manech (Gaspard Ullliel), is the 19-year-old fiancé of Mathilde, a woman he had known in their childhood days and for whom he is wont to carve the initials M.M.M. into trees to represent "Manech Marries Mathilde." He proves to be somewhat naive midpoint in the story by carving the letters while he is circled by a hostile German aircraft spitting machine-gun bullets both at him and at the guys living in the mud and rain of the trenches. Despite stories that seep into the country home where the orphaned and partially crippled Mathilde lives with her aunt and uncle, she refuses to believe that her man is dead. "A Very Long Engagement" is a kind of road movie in which we follow her search, in one instance using an eccentric private detective and in another taking advantage of what she might find in a government archive.
By juxtaposing scenes from the godawful, rain-spattered trenches with those of a virtual Eden in the French countryside, Jeunet joins the army of political figures and artists who, since the time that "Lysistrata" was penned, count themselves as anti-war. War is not only Hell: it's pointless and stupid.
Despite the complexity that so many secondary characters bring to the project, the movie moves along at a decent pace, chronicling such diverse actions as the ill-advised patronage of a corrupt general at a whorehouse and the execution of a hooker who is responsible for the general's grotesque exit from life. Jeunet only provides some explosions and rapid-fire shelling that make this a creditable war film, but in doing so he sacrifices the emotional pull that Mathilde's nearly hopeless quest deserves.
Rated R. 133 minutes. © 2004 by Harvey Karten @harveycritic.com
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