Un long dimanche de fiançailles (2004)

Director:

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Writers:

Sébastien Japrisot (novel)
Jean-Pierre Jeunet (story) ...

Release Date:

27 October 2004 (Belgium)

Genre:

Drama | Mystery | Romance | War

Tagline:

Never let go

Plot:

Tells the story of a young woman's relentless search for her fiancé, who has disappeared from the trenches of the Somme during World War One.

Plot Keywords:

Soldier | Court Martial | WWI | France | Polio

Awards:

Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 16 wins & 21 nominations

Cast

Audrey Tautou	...	Mathilde
Gaspard Ulliel	...	Manech
Dominique Pinon	...	Sylvain
Chantal Neuwirth	...	Bénédicte
André Dussollier	...	Pierre-Marie Rouvières
Ticky Holgado	...	Germain Pire
Marion Cotillard	...	Tina Lombardi
Dominique Bettenfeld	...	Ange Bassignano
Jodie Foster	...	Elodie Gordes
Jean-Pierre Darroussin	...	Benjamin Gordes
Clovis Cornillac	...	Benoît Notre-Dame
Jean-Pierre Becker	...	Lieutenant Esperanza
Denis Lavant	...	Six-Soux
Jérôme Kircher	...	Bastoche
Albert Dupontel	...	Célestin Poux

Also Known As:

A Very Long Engagement (International: English title) (UK) (USA)

MPAA:

Rated R for violence and sexuality.

Runtime:

133 min

Country:

France | USA

Language:

French | German

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital | SDDS

Certification:

Taiwan:R-12 | Spain:13 | Canada:18A (Ontario) | Malaysia:U | Iceland:16 | Switzerland:16 (canton of Zurich) | Portugal:M/16 | Germany:12 (f) | Sweden:15 | Argentina:16 | Australia:MA | Brazil:16 | Chile:14 | Czech Republic:12 | Finland:K-15 | France:U | Hong Kong:IIB | Japan:R-15 | Netherlands:16 | New Zealand:R16 | Peru:14 | Philippines:R-13 | Singapore:M18 | South Korea:15 | Switzerland:14 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:14 (canton of Vaud) | UK:15 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Austerlitz Railway Station, Paris 13, Paris, France

Company:

2003 Productions

Trivia:

Jean-Pierre Jeunet originally wanted to cast Dominique Pinon as Germain Pire the private eye and Ticky Holgado as uncle Sylvain. However, Holgado had been diagnosed with cancer and the studio refused to insure him. Therefore, Jeunet decided to switch the actors and did not regret his decision afterward. As Holgado became more and more ill, he began to have trouble concentrating and remembering his lines. Jeunet prepared a rough cut of the movie for Holgado to see, but Ticky passed on before he could do so.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: The rural Breton cottage of 1916 has a telephone (which is probably unusual for the time), while outside views of the cottage reveal no telephone poles or wires.

Quotes:

Narrator: Mathilde leans back against her chair, folds her hands in her lap, and looks at him. In the sweetness of the air, in the light of the garden, Mathilde looks at him. She looks at him... She looks at him...

Movie Connections:

Featured in Une année au front, les coulisses de 'Un long dimanche de fiancailles' (2005) (V)

Soundtrack:

Peer Gynt: Suite Number 1, Opus 46

A Very Long Search for a Loved One

Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet in the hit, "Amelie," employed scintillating Audrey Tatou, the most expressive young French actress in film today, to portray a whimsical and charming girl-woman in search of love. With her now as a young French rural ingénue searching for years after The Great War (aka World War I or, even better, The War to End All Wars) for a probably killed fiancé, Jeunet crafted a moving, often penetrating story centering on the charnel carnage of trench warfare.

Lame as a single-digit-age child because of polio and living with relatives who took over after her parents were killed in an accident, Mathilde is befriended by Manech (Gasparad Ulliel). Mathilde, a loner separated from her peers by her disability, and Manech become closest friends. Late adolescence brings love and lust, commitment and an engagement.

But in 1917 the French Army needed fresh meat for the bloody maw that was warfare on the almost terminally static Western Front. And off went Manech along with many others who never returned.

Employing the harshest discipline of any Western army in modern history, the French Army (which gave the world the Dreyfus trial and in World War I actually used decimation to punish mutinous regiments and divisions) sentences Manech and four others to be cast into No Man's Land without weapons, without any possibility of being allowed to return but with the macabre requirement that they respond to morning roll call if alive (not a good bet). Their alleged crime was self-mutilation to get out of combat (what we call in the American military, "SIW," Self-Inflicted Wounds).

Mathilde in 1920, steely faithful in a moving and believable way, searches fervently for her fiancé whom she believes "must" be alive somewhere, somehow. Employing artful stratagems and enlisting the willing, the paid and the dragooned, her search takes her to cities and battlefields. With resort to a child's employment of magical thinking she frequently whispers tests about what will happen in immediate, ordinary circumstances with one result "proving" for her that Manech is still alive. Tatou makes this self-deception appealing and infinitely sad.

As Spielberg did in "Saving Private Ryan," Jeunet brings the immediacy of the meat-grinding battlefield to the viewer over and over again through superb if sometimes difficult to watch cinematography. Of course no film truly captures the desperation, the epidemic fatality that gripped and demoralized the French Army after years of immobile, set-piece fighting. One needs to read Robert Graves or Siegfried Sassoon for that. But Jeunet has brought to the screen the most realistic World War I trench scenes since "All Quiet on the Western Front" (the 1930 original, of course).

Tatou is an acting tsunami here, alternately beguiling and tense and always hopeful while fighting despair. Expect to see her in many fine roles in the future. She's marvelous.

The entire cast is excellent-few are known in the U.S.

A remarkable movie with an ending that will satisfy and disturb at the same time.

Tatou and Jeunet deserve Oscar nominations.

10/10