A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT
Directed & Produced by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
Written by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Guillaume Laurant, from the novel by Sebastien Japrisot.
Director of Photography: Bruno Delbonnel.
Edited by: Herve Schneid.
Music by: Angelo Badalamenti.
Released by: Warners Independent Pictures.
Language: French with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: France. 133 min. Rated: R.
With: Audrey Tautou, Gaspard Ulliel, Marion Cotillard, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Julie Depardieu & Jodie Foster.

Director’s Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s follow-up to Amélie is uncannily like last year’s Cold Mountain. Both are visually opulent and emotionally remote historical epics. The film begins promisingly as Jeunet succinctly depicts the fate of five French soldiers, all of whom have been court-martialed and sent to certain death during the battle at the Somme. The war scenes are brutally terrifying. One of men is a shell-shocked 20-year-old nicknamed Cornflower (Gaspard Ulliel). He is the love of Mathilde (Audrey Tautou), who years after the war, searches for him not believing the eyewitness reports of his death. She hires a private investigator and becomes a bit of a sleuth herself, locating the wives and girlfriends of the other doomed men. As whimsical as the character of Amélie, Mathilde also has her own set of superstitions and mind games: “If I reach the bend before the car, he’ll come back.” In a subplot worthy of James Bond, a queen of disguises, a Corsican prostitute, carries out her own deadly campaign of revenge on the officers responsible for the men’s death.

This is a film spilling over with images. The scenes of post-war France are stunning, especially a computer generated shot of Paris in front of the Garnier Opera House. Many other backdrops, though, are obviously CGI. Too often the visual effects and beautiful scenery upstage the story, and the numerous establishing shots slow the pace.

Mathilde is described in the narration as hopeful. Tautou’s Mathilde, however, is more angry and dour. Gone is the luminous charisma of her work in Amélie or in Alain Resnais’ Not on the Lips. It’s as if she’s fighting being the ingénue. And what little screen time Tautou and Ulliel share together is not enough to establish a connection between them and the audience. Jodie Foster as a war widow is much more empathetic. Kent Turner
November 25, 2004