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A Very Long Engagement film review
A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT
Running time: 134 mins
Starring: Audrey Tautou, Dominique Pinon, Chantal Neuwirth, Gaspard Ulliel, Marion Cotillard, Ticky Holgado, Tcheky Karyo, Jodie Foster
Amelie goes to war in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's latest, as the French director reprises his relationship with Audrey Tautou. Tautou plays Mathilde, a young woman searching for her lover who may or may not have been killed in the trenches of WWI, and like Amelie she is a steadfast romantic at heart, refusing to believe her man is dead. But unlike the success of the pair's previous work, this new effort overloads the viewer with style, treads an uneven path between clarity and confusion, and lacks a real heart to make viewers really connect with the story being told on screen.
The film is set in two different periods, one just after the war and one during it. In 1920 Mathilde, who sports a deformed polio-ridden leg, lives with her guardians Sylvain (Jeunet regular Dominique Pinon) and Benedicte (Chantal Neuwirth) in an idyllic little Breton cottage, surrounded by geese and frequented by an eccentric postman. Mathilde waits attentively for his deliveries, as she is desperate for news of her boyfriend Manech (Gaspard Ulliel), who may or may not have perished in 1917. Despite her carers' raised eyebrows, Mathilde hires a private detective (Ticky Holgado) who embarks on a labyrinthine quest to find out what happened to her sweetheart.
Flashbacks gradually reveal the truth. Deep in the French trenches of the Great War, morale was low and officers were obsessed with deterring deserters. Manech is one of five in his regiment to be court-martialled for cowardice, after allegedly injuring themselves to escape the horrors of war. In an unusual punishment, all five are sent to No Man's Land to fend for themselves. We learn about the background of all five and their intricate relationships with each other in great detail, and the detective slowly begins to piece some of the information together. Meanwhile, a prostitute (Marion Cotillard), attempts to take her own revenge on the officers in charge, and a bona fide Hollywood superstar makes the year's most bizarre (and very successful) cameo appearance as the French-speaking wife of one of the five.
With such a vast amount of characters to keep track of and such an epic tale to tell, the film loses its way occasionally in terms of its narrative. Similarly, because so much time is spent on extraneous situations, we fail to really fall for the love between Mathilde and Manech. This is a great pity, as war relentlessly throws up heartbreaking situations, but Jeunet concentrates on the bigger picture without keeping his focus on the core of the story.
Tautou carries the film convincingly, although her impish character is hardly distinguishable from Amelie. The supporting cast all have the necessary left-field look that a Jeunet film demands, while fans of the director will recognise his trademark visual flair, astonishing production values, absurdist sense of irony and his familiar montages of sound and vision. Nevertheless, his fairytale treatment of the horrors of war, especially that as inhuman as WWI, may prove a little too much to stomach for some.
Paul Hurley
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