A Very Long Engagement: DVD & Movie Review (2004)

(Originally published 2004)

The World War I drama "A Very Long Engagement" could only come from French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, whose 2001 film - the quirky, Academy Award-nominated "Amelie" - at last gave the director the right showcase for his unmistakable style and unusual worldview. It was a marriage that worked.

Jeunet has been directing since the late 1970s, taking his share of awards for a handful of short films and features but never really making a splash on the international scene because his early films were likely too remote and unwieldy for Hollywood to embrace.

In 1997, he had a shot to broaden his reach with his first Hollywood film - the rotten "Alien: Resurrection." But with that little space bomb exploding in a vacuum, Jeunet took a five-year hiatus to work on "Amelie," a movie set in his own Montmartre neighborhood in Paris - a place he knew, with characters he loved.

It all came together. What Jeunet found in "Amelie" wasn't just a plucky story suited for his bold visual taste and his dark sense of humor, but an actress with the sort of screen presence that allowed him to hover in the ether he favors, while also keeping his story grounded in the reality it needed to succeed: Audrey Tautou.

Now, in "A Very Long Engagement," director and star come together again with fine, sometimes funny, and often moving results.

As loosely adapted by Jeunet and Guillaume Laurant from Sebastien Japrisot's novel, "Engagement" is about a young woman named Mathilde (Tautou) who knows in her heart that her fiance, Manech (Gaspard Ulliel), is still alive in spite of fighting in the trenches against the Germans and new reports that he's dead.

Word has it that Manech, along with four other men, self-mutilated himself in an effort to be released from the war so he could go home. Banished by his superior officer to No Man's Land - the area between French and German lines - the five men were naturally considered doomed when the Germans opened fire on them.

Through the help of strangers and one peerless detective, Mathilde learns that Manech might not be dead after all. And so rises a mission that burns in her soul and through the movie, with Mathilde cutting through a complicated plot filled with twists, clever touches, the wet, muddy horror of the first world war and characters just colorful enough not to be overwhelmed by any of it.

Of particular note is Jodie Foster as a soldier's wife. At first, her appearance is startling, particularly since she's on a tear, speaking fluent French and having the sort of sex that tends to raise eyebrows. But then you realize how right she is for the role and the movie is lifted a notch.
Tautou, as usual, fills the screen with the eyes of a silent-era star. She uses them like one, too - and she's marvelous.

With "Amelie" and "Engagement," Jeunet joins a select group of directors - most significantly Truffaut - whose work is immediately recognizable.

With the exception of "Resurrection," there is nothing canned about his movies, nothing generic. And while "Engagement" is unquestionably his largest production to date, he still holds true to what defines him - the sly bit characters given to the unexpected, the little human flourishes that place the film in real life, a dense, complex story line that somehow comes together at the end.

And what an end.

Grade: A