Un long dimanche de fiançailles

Plot synopsis:
Five French soldiers are convicted of self-mutilation in order to escape military service during World War I. They are condemned to face near certain death in the no man's land between the French and German trench lines. It appears that all of them were killed in a subsequent battle, but Mathilde, the fiancée of one of the soldiers, refuses to give up hope and begins to uncover clues as to what actually took place on the battlefield. She is all the while driven by the constant reminder of what her fiancé had carved into one of the bells of the church near their home, MMM for Manech Aime Mathilde (Manech Loves Mathilde; a pun on the French word aime, which is pronounced like the letter "M". In the English-language version, this is changed to "Manech's Marrying Mathilde").
Along the way, she discovers the brutally corrupt system used by the French government to deal with those who tried to escape the front. She also discovers the stories of the other men who were sentenced to the no man's land as a punishment. She, with the help of a private investigator, attempts to find out what happened to her fiancé. The story is told both from the point of view of the fiancée in Paris and the French countryside—mostly Brittany—of the 1920s, and through flashbacks to the battlefield.
Eventually Mathilde finds out her fiance is alive, but he suffers from amnesia. Seeing Mathilde, Manech seems to be oblivious of her. At this, Mathilde sits on the garden chair silently watching Manech with tears in her eyes and smile on her lips.

Tags: revenge, boring, murder, romantic, flashback

Review:
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).
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.
The acting is strong, the scenes are breathtaking and overall, so much attention has been put to details that it feels like a labor of love more than a big production movie.
Jeunet has mastered the film medium giving 'A Very Long Engagement' a unique and fairy tale like visual style.
The graphic World War I trenches, provide an excellent contrast to the simple but charming mystery that Mathilde embarks on through the film.Although Jeunet relies heavily on Audrey Tautou's performance, it is ultimately his one of a kind visual style that emotionally ties the viewer.
Lovely Audrey Tautou and director Jean-Pierre Jeunet reteam (having previously made the delightful comedy Amelie) in the epic war drama, A Very Long Engagement, based on the novel by Sebastien Japrisot.
This French language film is an emotional odyssey that keeps you guessing while it never loses sight of its humanity and even humor.Childhood friends and then lovers, Mathilde (Tatout) and Manech (Gaspard Ulliel) are separated when duty calls in World War One France.
Far from Amelie, the team Jeunet/Tautou demonstrates his talent, showing with poetry love and war, beauty and horror, sweetness and violence.
Mathilde and Manech, played by the stunning Audrey Tautou and the new French heart-throb Gaspard Ulliel, are the ideal lovers, determinate, passionate, separated by destiny, hoping...because hope is the message, the only one of a film where love is giving and giving again.
And I must say that overall, I preferred Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles.Right from the opening shot of a broken Christ statue dangling off a cross that's been blown to bits in a muddy WWI trench, you are reminded of how well director Jean-Pierre Jeunet has understood the importance of masterful cinematography.
A feast of visual humour we can trace right back to Delicatessen and a collection of interwoven, snappy little stories from endearing or comic minor players, could render the movie Disneyish (The way Les Choristes was) had Jeunet failed to also blend into the cake mix two helpings of darkness to one of sex: he does exactly the same thing in both Amèlie and Delicatessen.
I also thought the flavour and FEEL of the epoch was beautifully evoked: I'm a sucker for thorough research in costuming and setting, so I cannot help responding positively when that aspect of a historic movie is accomplished.But I was reminded of Amèlie's contrived little quirks one time too many when the German woman in the Paris bistrot (trying to discreetly attract Mathilde's attention to give her some clues), erases the writing on the "Today's specialities" blackboard by leaving just three M's.
Regarding the central couple, Mathilde and Manech, whose young love for one another we are supposed to believe in and warm to in order to find the story moving at all, I thought Jeunet did a good job of remaining just this side of cloying and sentimental.
I was also impressed with the Jodie Foster subplot and was more than a little impressed with her linguistic skills: among English-speaking actors, so far I only knew of Kristin Scott Thomas being such a convincing performer in the French language.Since Un Long Dimanche is a little too much of a ruffian to be a truly honest work of art, I will therefore knock a few points off the 9 I would have given it just for sheer entertainment value, and leave it with a more than dignified 7.5 out of 10 instead!.
Amelie and the Big Bad War. Un long dimanche de fiançailles mixes romance and mystery amid the brutal realities of World War I, and though it's a solid film, it never reaches the greatness it strives for so earnestly.
For some reason, Jeunet also comes too close in theme and setting to two much better works on World War I by Bertrand Tavernier: La Vie et rien d'autre (Life and Nothing But), in which a woman searches for her missing husband in the aftermath of the war, and Capitaine Conan, about a group of French soldiers at the time of the Armistice and beyond.
Unfortunately for him, Capitaine Conan is one of the greatest films about war ever made and La Vie et rien d'autre has an emotional power and complexity that only serve to make one aware of how little of the same Jeunet is able to achieve in his own work.Audrey Tautou is charming, of course, and one enjoys watching her on the screen, but she has to carry this heavy film on her back, without much complexity in her character to explore or another strong actor to work against.
Something besides the same role over and over.One of the few times Tautou gets a break in the film is when we meet Jodie Foster's character and spend some time with her story.
This is one of the best parts of the film, and if the rest of the movie had had the same emotional urgency and passion as this sequence, it would have been a much stronger work.Jeunet could also have spent more time on Manech and the other four soldiers around him.
And while the battle scenes are sometimes powerful, there is the sense that we have seen this all before.Un long dimanche de fiançailles was an interesting choice for Jeunet's first movie after Amelie.
It's about a young woman whose lover has supposedly been executed for self-mutilation in the First World War. She goes on a quest to find him, trusting her intuition that he is still alive.After the dazzling spirit of Amelie, this film had two choices.
Precisely for this reason, though, I am disposed to air a contrary opinion, if only to reassure anyone else who may see the film, dislike it, and visit this website, that he or she is not alone.'Un long dimanche de fiancailles' has an intricate and potentially affecting storyline about the unswerving devotion of a young Frenchwoman (Mathilde) to her fiancé (Manech), believed killed in the First World War. It also has a very inventive, painstaking, and distinctive director.
Desperate attention-seeking is the hallmark of this film.Now, highly-coloured hyperactive artificiality can work very well in comedy - it did in 'Amelie' indeed - but this story of war, suffering, and love called for restraint and the art that conceals art.
The story sweeps you along and features an engaging cast, unbelievably fine production values, and cinematography that's like fine French paintings come to life."A Long Engagement" is by the same director as "Amelie," Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
But whereas "Amelie" played like an amusing soufflé, "A Long Engagement" is darker and earthier, like truffles dug out of French soil.Tautou plays a crippled girl who won't give up searching for her fiancée, reportedly killed by his own troops for self-mutilation during World War I.
The "Great War" has been overshadowed, in history and certainly in cinema, by the Second World War. But as director Jeunet shows so powerfully in "A Long Engagement," it was a war with unique terrors and a story we have yet to understand.So watch the movie.
I for one cannot say whether this is drama, war, comedy, fantasy, or romance and honestly I feel as if I've seen bits and pieces of everything, with nothing being followed through until the ending.Another thing that bugged me about this film, was that it was way too complex.
That kind of book so delicious to read.you can't take your eyes off  because of the richness of the characters created by Jeunet and, the poetry of the plot and mainly because the power of Mathilde's quest for her fiancée in the french trenches of World War I.
However, in the hands of a visionary like French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amélie, Delicatessen, Alien Resurrection), becomes a unique experience.He manages to combine the tenderness of an innocent love story with the brutality and gritty scenarios of a war drama (without letting this detail totally overbear the plot); add a little mystery and, of course, all the funky, surreal elements that characterize Jeunet's rich visual style.
Despite the fact that Audrey Tautou is simply adorable, this movie is great because the director (Jeunet) had the ability to reflect the horror of war.
During the film Jeunet involves in a brilliant way all the characters to tell us the history of one specific moment during the First World War: five French soldiers abandoned between their and enemy lines with the specific goal to get them death.
I also particularly liked the ways it shows war bringing out the good, the quirky, and the worst among the participants -- as well as blind, unintended stupidities.Other story lines make kaleidoscopic appearances that occasionally mystify us as to why this event or these people appear here -- or there -- until, finally, the separate strands braid into one unified whole by the end.Others have described this film as "Amelie Goes to War" with, IMO, some justification.The film "Amelie" was also directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and also starred Audrey Tautou; it is a fairy tale in which "Amelie's"/Tautou's presence served as a force of transformation in the lives of others.
It's not easy to make an upbeat movie backgrounded by the insane trench warfare of the First World War, but director Jean Pierre Jeunet has succeeded here.
But it is also as far from Amelie as Saving Private Ryan is from Spash.The previews of this film focus on the love story of the title, and show brief glimpses of the war that keeps the lovers apart.
JP Jeunet brings a fabulous cast, some of them already famous and known faces, with a very surprising supporting role for Jodie Foster, but also Andre Dussolier, a star in his own right and cast from Amelie.With a stronger contrast all throughout the film, he brings a fully realistic and well documented view of 1920 in France and WWI with a hint of Belle Epoque and the beginning of the Annees Folles, while clearly not tipping either way, and at the same time keeping this set in the background, where it belongs.
This film plays right after the end of World War I, with flashbacks to earlier scenes, mostly from the trenches of WWI, but even some earlier.The story is about Mathilde, a French woman in her early twenties, looking for her fiancé who didn't come back from the war.
There is a subtle attention to detail and without detracting from the plot, the director makes the most of his sets and locations, resulting in some breath taking shots.The film revolves around a young girl, Mathilde, who's fiancé was sent to war.
Amelie is one of the best French movies of last years.I wanted to see A very long engagement directed by the same director(Jean Pierre Jeunet) and starred by the same actress(Audrey Tatou).The result is simply,a masterpiece.First of all,the war scenes are simply great.I could feel that I was fighting in that war.The love story is extremely touching and excellent.The movie kept me very fun.Audrey Tatou makes a great performance on this film and there is a famous Hollywood actress in a special appearance.I will not say who she is so that I do not ruin the surprise.A very long engagement is simply a masterpiece.Rating:10.
The magic that makes the movie work lies in Mathilde (Audrey Tautou from Amelie), who is so bright and happy that she makes you endure the desolate scenes from the trenches, and her actions makes you have hope, against all odds, that she might be right.
Also, the the origins of Jeunet's visual language in Delicatessen and The City OLT were revealed to me: the men in raincoats, the gleaming light, the desolateness of no-mans-land, the old fashioned but deadly technology, an almost post-apocalyptic atmosphere of despair: it was all there in the previous two films (but not in Amelie, of course) and it finds its perfect match in the setting of this film, the first world war.
Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet has again joined with Audrey Tautou as Mathilde, a young lover of a young man, Manech, condemned to death for self-mutilation in WWI, who in 1920 is doggedly pursued by a Mathilde determined to find him.
WWI remains the "war to end all wars," an ironic beginning to worse wars to come.As impressive as the preternatural determination of Mathilde is the singular cinematography of Bruno Delbonnel (The Cat's Meow) along with the production design of Aline Buneto: The darkness of the Somme trenches infiltrates everything in the film while the brown of the countryside evokes time gone by and a world bled of beauty.
The cinematography in "Engagement" is so perfectly attuned to the melancholy of this Romeo and Juliet romance that it makes me want to step into the film to live in rural France and love without qualification.The film's weakness comes out of its 134 minutes, in which the tortuous tales of the other four condemned self-mutilated soldiers need not have been given so much time.
But she's still got that smile.Indeed, what a peculiar, warped idea it is, to reduce all the horrors of World War I trench warfare to a far-fetched Rashoman-like investigation by Mathilde (Tautou) to track down a young man called Manech.
They've told Mathilde that Manech is dead and she won't believe it.The filigreed, elongated tale then focuses, with Jeunet's curious unemotional obsessiveness, upon a crew of five French soldiers who've wound up, in the craziness of war and the brutal code of the trenches, getting condemned to die for self-mutilation -- a bum rap for at least one of them, who was just clumsy, or got involved in a freak accident.
And given that Ulliel is a more expressive actor than Tautou (watch her in Frears's Dirty Pretty Things and you'll see how limited she is), that's a pity -- and a miscalculation.You keep following the elaborate, over-produced narrative, hoping it will begin to matter, that the love story will come to life either in the flashbacks or in the future, but it never does; and the extreme grimness of the trench scenes is hard to reconcile with the fairytale playfulness of the story.
This movie is a masterpiece.The visuals are ravishing; the performances are spot-on and so moving in their restraint and delicacy; and the battle scenes are skillful and terrible in the classical sense of the word.A highlight of the film is the scene with M & M at the lighthouse as young adults--Audrey Tatou's smile in that shot from above is the most wonderful expression of joy in love I have seen on film in ages.All the flashbacks and imagined sequences and scenes from different perspectives really help the viewer follow the complexities of the story.
Jean Pierre Jeunet re-unites with his heroin of 'Amélie from Montmartre' and tries to deliver with 'Un long dimanche de fiançaille' another poetic movie about yet again a young woman, Mathilde who is relentlessly searching for her fiancée, who has disappeared from the trenches of the Somme during World War One. Jean Pierre Jeunet is one of those very powerful directors that understand how crucial cinematography is in a movie aiming for poetry.
I wish there were more films like these coming from the US, but since there has been a very long time since I have seen a really good American movie, I have turned more and more to European film-makers (French, Spanish, Italian and Scandinavian).
A deeply textured love story set during World War I, A Very Long Engagement is full of the same charm that has pervaded all of his films while also containing an overall darker feel and mood.
Her French is perfect and her character tragic, and even as whispers of recognition throughout the audience echoed, they soon subsided as the world of the film took over again and every element of it fell into place.Admittedly, as Tautou's Mathlide searches for her long lost lover and the path to his destiny comes closer to an end, much becomes quite confusing and complicated.
The technique can be frustrating at first since so many bits of information are thrown at the viewer without much context until it all weaves together into a singular strand that moves toward the ending.Audrey Tautou, who seems to be turning into Dietrich to Jeunet's von Sternberg, downplays the charm she displayed in "Amelie" for a more sullen performance as Mathilde, a woman handicapped by childhood polio but relentless in her search for Manech, her fiancé and lifelong love.
A mystery, a love story, a war movie, a director's show piece  take your pick.
A Very Long Engagement is another production of Jean Pierre Jeunet, together with his Amelie star, Audrey Tautou.
A wonderful Audrey Tautou, better acting then ever since her role in Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, plays Mathilde, a very realistic character, that doesn't want to believe her fiancé died in the war.
From the director who brought us one of the best feel-good movies ever made, Amelie, comes a beautiful film of hope and undying love.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet makes rather quirky films, and A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT is no exception.