A Very Long Engagement
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Features
• Closed-captioned
• Color
• DVD-Video
• Subtitled
• Widescreen
• NTSC
In Theaters : 2004
DVD Release : 12 July, 2005 |
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A Very Long Engagement description
Both epic and intimate, A Very Long Engagement reunites Audrey Tautou and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the star and director of the hugely popular Amelie. A young woman named Mathilde (Tautou, Happenstance)separated from her lover by World War I refuses to believe he's been killed and launches an investigation into his fate--an investigation that spins in all directions, creating dozens of miniature stories (including that of an Italian prostitute avenging the death of her own lover by elaborate means) that shift to and fro in time. The dazzling curlicues of narrative put brutality and tenderness back to back, shifting between crushing inevitabilities and miraculous rescues with deft storytelling skill and the lush visual style of the director of Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children. Through it all, Tautou--fierce and luminous--anchors the movie effortlessly. She's among the most emotionally engaging actresses in cinema, with the kind of expressive beauty that transcends language. A gorgeous, far-reaching film; the huge cast also includes Jodie Foster (The Silence of the Lambs), Gaspard Ulliel (Strayed), and Dominique Pinon (Alien: Resurrection). --Bret Fetzer |
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A Very Long Engagement Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
An Intricate WWI Whodunit Masquerades Effectively as Epic Romance
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The previews of this movie presented images that promised an enduring love story set against the backdrop of WWI. What Jean-Pierre Jeunet's 2004 follow-up to [[ASIN:B0000640VO Amelie]] really is, however, is a whodunit, a jigsaw puzzle of a mystery that starts slowly in a fragmented recollection of seemingly unrelated events and gradually through the introduction of new characters, becomes a story of unrelenting commitment. That it is driven by a seemingly naA ve love story seems almost incidental to what the director seems intent to present here, an epic inspired not only by Stanley Kubrick's 1957 antiwar classic about a WWI suicide mission, [[ASIN:0792841409 Paths of Glory]], but also Edward Zwick's 1996 [[ASIN:B00005221J Courage Under Fire]] and to some degree, Akira Kurosawa's 1950 classic, [[ASIN:B00003CXC6 Rashomon]].
The film is successful in evoking memories of these other films and at the same time, bears the unmistakable stamp of Jeunet's now-recognizable visual invention. Whereas his filmmaking style befits the optimism and quirkiness of [[ASIN:B0000640VO Amelie]], it surprisingly feeds very well into this much darker tale. The most memorable example is an extended scene, which takes place in a field hospital crowded with wounded soldiers and housing a huge, hydrogen-filled zeppelin. An undetonated shell is lodged in the ceiling as the zeppelin unexpectedly lets loose from its tether. The contact of these objects is inevitable, but Jeunet films it in such a stylized chain of events that I was impressed with his flair as much as I was dreading the outcome. Jeunet invests a lot of effort capturing the bleakness and sheer brutality of war, including a plethora of mutilations that made me wince, but again his visual sense does not allow it to reach the gut level of the opening scenes of Steven Spielberg's [[ASIN:B00001ZWUS Saving Private Ryan]]. Rather, they become part of this intimate world he is building to facilitate his storytelling, which in itself is stylized by its very unfolding. The technique can be frustrating at first since so many bits of information are thrown at the viewer without much context until it all weaves together into a singular strand that moves toward the ending.
Audrey Tautou, Dietrich to Jeunet's von Sternberg, downplays the charm she displayed in [[ASIN:B0000640VO Amelie]] for a more sullen performance as Mathilde, a woman handicapped by childhood polio but relentless in her search for Manech, her fiancA and lifelong love. I wish there were more scenes of their blooming relationship, as I think that is the one imbalance in the film that could have drawn me closer to her character. So much is assumed of our empathy for her plight, but frankly she comes across as a bit too monomaniacal at times. With the intensity of the romance missing, Manech, as played with appropriate vacuity by Gaspard Ulliel, comes across as something of a cipher despite what is obviously his undying love for her. The four other men who were court-martialed with Manech on the front lines for self-mutilation are all revealed in their own stories. A serial-killing prostitute brings an unusually exotic, Mata Hari aspect to more than one of the stories, but that is not the only plot twist. Prominent in one of the other stories is Jodie Foster, speaking what sounds like impeccable French, as a put-upon housewife who in an effort to save her husband, gets mired in an unfortunate love triangle. Foster gives a fine, small performance, but her recognizable appearance and Yankee appeal cut into the realism of the story at an important juncture.
Fortunately, the film is a feast for the eyes throughout. Thanks to Bruno Debonnel's expert cinematography, the film contains desaturated hues that produce an almost brown-and-white look that recalls an old, graying photograph. I think the film could have been trimmed from its 2 A -hour running time, but it doesn't feel much time has been wasted in getting to the hopeful conclusion. It's definitely worth seeing for Jeunet's individualistic filmmaking panache. The two-disc 2005 DVD set contains the movie on the first disc and an extremely informative commentary track from Jeunet (in French with English subtitles) that covers everything about the production. The highlight of the second disc is the comprehensive 73-minute documentary, "A Year at the Front". More than a standard making-of feature, it covers everything from storyboarding to location shooting. Two other shorts are included - "Parisian Scenes" covers what it took to re-create 1920's Paris, and "Before the Explosion" concentrates on the mechanics behind the zeppelin sequence. Finally, there are also fourteen deleted/extended scenes with optional commentary from Jeunet. |
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A Very Long Engagement dvd movie.