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A Very Long Engagement (2004)
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Movie Review by Nelson
December 2nd, 2004
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The first half or so of "A Very Long Engagement" might as well be titled the "Further Adventures of Amélie," so closely does it hew to the style and story of that earlier international hit, which also teamed director Jean-Pierre Jeunet with actress Audrey Tautou. Like "Amélie," "Engagement" has at its center a quirky, slightly sickly heroine who's stubbornly romantic and prone to superstitious beliefs. "Engagement" also shares with its predecessor the stylistic device of immediately giving a rapid summation of a character's history and preferences right after each new character is introduced. And among the actors, I counted at least four from "Amelie" in "Engagement."
Even fans of the earlier film, however, among whom I count myself, will not be pleased at how similar "Engagement" is to "Amélie." After all, the movie *isn't* titled the "Further Adventures of Amélie" and that's not what most of us were likely expecting. Instead, the likely hope was that Jeunet would apply his unique visual style to tell an entirely new story, and that Tautou might reveal her ability to play something other than a gamine romantic.
In the case of this film, they're both given ample material with which to fashion something original. "Engagement" is based on a recent French bestseller of the same name about Mathilde, a young soldier's fiancée during World War I who believes against all odds that her beloved Manech is still alive. In the story, Manech, who's played in the film by the very young-looking Gaspard Ulliel, is sentenced along with four other soldiers to be court-martialed for injuring themselves in an attempt to get discharged. The rest of his story is told in bits and pieces in flashback as Mathilde tracks down every possible clue in hopes of finding Manech.
Although the story's initial battle scenes are rendered with an impressive realism reminiscent of "Saving Private Ryan," the film doesn't really start to come into its own until it allows characters other than Tautou to take over the screen and tell their stories. Most notable among these characters is Jodie Foster in an unbilled cameo as the wife of one of the officers who witnessed Manech's final days. In perfect French, Foster delivers an incredibly realistic and poignant performance in contrast to the often whimsical or exaggerated dispositions of the film's primary characters. Marion Cotillard as the vengeful lover of one of Manech's fellow soldiers does much the same in a subsequent scene, helping the film to build to its inevitable climax.
Only when the film abandons the fanciful tone of "Amélie," however, is it able to achieve a deeper level of resonance. For it's then that Jeunet's bravura storytelling skills are used most effectively in service of the film's themes of the power of love and the idiocy of war.
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