Review of A Very Long Engagement (2004) by Rizvi   — 17 Feb 2011

Three years after the release of Amelie, Jeunet with his arsenal of whimsical actors and team players were called together again to make A Very Long Engagement, a film about Mathilde, a provincial girl living in France, and her relentless pursuit of clues leading to the whereabouts of her missing fiancee, near the end of WWI.

This film was beautifully shot with stand-out colors, textures and vignettes amplifying a tale of war, love, revenge, and survival. Tautou is beautiful as a determined young woman nearly crippled by polio, Marion Cotillard is stunning as a Corsican whore, and as an extra special surprise, American actress Jodie Foster makes an appearance as a tired widow, speaking French fluently as though it were her first language.

It also combines the realistic maladies of a war movie with a Noir story and romantic drama as we gradually learn about the fate of the five court-martialed soldiers kicked into no man's land between French and German trenches.

Jeunet's eye for detail and his approach to special effects is interspersed throughout his scenes making the aesthetic pop with images dipped and ready to feed the mind with revery. Women and men alike will appreciate this film; but especially Romantics.