Well our next film is firmly back in the land of mere mortals. After the success of Amelie, Director Jean Pierre Jeunet and Audrey Tautou team up again in A Very Long Engagement. Based on the novel by Jean Baptiste Rossi, under his pseudonym, Sebastian Japrisot. A Very Long Engagement is set towards the end of World War I, when Mathilde, played by Tautou, learns that her fiance, Manech, was one of five men court martialled for self mutilation, and banished into no man's land between the French and German front lines. Mathilde stubbornly refuses to believe he is dead and she embarks on her own investigation into what really happened to the men. Jean Pierre Jeunet combines his distinctive hyper realistic visual style and darkly comic approach, that we're familiar with from films like Delicatessen and The City Of Lost Children. Audrey Tautos's performance is playful and intelligent without being sentimental. The production design, cinematography and score by Angelo Badalamenti, are all deliciously realised. What makes this film so significant is that Jeunet depicts the horrors of war authentically and with respect, but thankfully avoids the glorification and pumped up heroics often seen in war films. Make a date with A Very Long Engagement - a truly remarkable and unpredictable story about love and war.
Watch 'A Very Long Engagement'
Monday 7 November, 8:30pm on SBS World Movies / Now streaming at SBS On Demand
MA15+
France, 2004
Genre: War, Drama
Language: French
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Starring: Audrey Tautou, Dominique Pinon, Gaspard Ulliel, Jean-Pierre Darroussin
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