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Un long dimanche de fiançailles (2004)
An absolutely wondrous film
"If I don't break the peel, Manech is alive."
Un long dimanche de fiançailles / A Very Long Engagement (2004, Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
In 1917 five French soldiers are convicted and sentenced to death for self mutilation. They are sent to the trench called Bingo Crepuscule ("Bingo Crepuscule? Why not Yuppi Tralala?") where they are to be sent into No Man's Land between the French and German lines, a place of certain, but horrible and long waiting death. One of the condemned is Manech (Gaspard Ulliel) a young man, not yet twenty. He has a fiancée, Mathilde (Audrey Tautou). We are informed of two things in the beginning of the film. One is that all five men are officially considered dead. The second is that "If Manech was dead, Mathilde would know." And that is truly the core of the film. Hope beyond all odds.
Mathilde was orphaned at 3 and lives with her uncle and aunt. She contracted polio at age 5 and have a permanent limp on her leg that requires daily massage treatment. She cannot talk about her parents without referring to them as her 'deceased' parents. In 1920 she receives a letter that a man who met Manech and the other four at Bingo Crépuscule wishes to see her. From this visit she gathers information that leads her to other survivors from the trench and the ones the dead left behind. From all these accounts form a picture: Some of the five may have gotten out alive. Where are they, and is Manech one of them? That is the quest the film undertakes.
Along the way we are greeted by an ocean of wonderful characters. We meet Mathilde's aunt, uncle and lawyer, all of who are unwilling participants in what they see as a crusade that does nothing but waste her inheritance. We meet the cheeky private detective Germain Pire (Ticky Holgado) whom Mathilde hires. He gives Mathilde a good price because she suffers from the same limp as his daughter. But in looking for the prostitute Tina Lombardi, the girlfriend of one of the condemned, he pays for several sessions (with Mathilde's money) to find out of any of the ones he meet is Lombardi. We meet Tina Lombardi (Marion Cotillard) herself, who is on the same quest as Mathilde, but mixed with a little murderous vengeance. Cotillard has only one real scene of dialogue acting in the film, but it is such a powerful scene that it seems as if we have had a personal relationship with the character throughout the film. We are also treated to an appearance by Jodie Foster who speaks fluent French, apparently. Some of the other noteworthy characters are the postman, the army cook, and even Mathilde's cat.
All this serves to make this a film where the quest is more important than the conclusion, and yet twice (once by the narrator and once by Mathilde herself) we are informed that if she doesn't find Manech, she intends to hang herself, and after seeing just how important Manech is to her, we are in no position to take this as a jest.
But the story and characters is far from the only wonderful things about the film. The film takes place in two times. The present, 1920, and flashbacks from 1917. The scenes in 1920 are all presented in a yellow tint and we see nothing but places of complete idyllic nature, almost as if there had never been a war. Even when we go to visit Bingo Crepuscule, there is nothing left of the trench and it has been covered by a field of corn, as if nothing had ever happened. The present is dreamlike and unreal. This is constantly contrasted to the sharp and terrible reality of 1917. We see nothing beautiful. We see trenches. Grey and lifeless. We see constant rain, wetting everything and turning the floor into mud. We see people dying, but the implicit is not that they die, it's that they live months, maybe years in these horrible places, losing all heart and soul, eating the same poor food over and over again, not seeing their loved ones. And then, only then, do they die. The scenes of battle are not as elaborate and stylish as, say, Saving Private Ryan, but they are as vivid and realistic as anything I've seen. Truly spectacular to look at.
The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous and takes full advantage of the colors. We see a scene at the beginning where a cart is riding on path between two fields of the most yellow corn you have ever seen. The cart stops in the middle of the road as the husband and wife in it see the two soldiers at the end of road who have come to draft the husband. We are then given a crane shot over the field and powerful wind machines are set to blow the fields into a frenzy of wind and floating corn particles. Utterly beautiful. And the film opens with the memorable shot of a shattered Jesus relic, swinging on a Cross from the nail in its only remaining hand. In the background the trenches, looming, waiting, inviting us.
A Very Long Engagement is a romance set to a background of war. But the themes are always blurred so that one becomes as important as the other. It is an extraordinary piece of film making that can be enjoyed by anyone, whether they like the genre or not. It is one of the greatest film experiences of the millennium. Nay, of the history of film making.