MOVIE REVIEW - Un Long Dimanche de Fiancailles (2004)

USA Title: A Very Long Engagement

Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Starring: Audrey Tautou, Gaspard Ulliel, Dominique Pinon, Chantel Neuwirth, Jodie Foster

Jeunet returns with his follow up to his 2001 critical success Amelie with yet another visually stunning and emmotionally strong story. It is the kind of love story that Hollywood would struggle to being to fruition.

Audrey Tautou is Mathilde, a young woman not much unlike her potrayal of Amelie, she is sweet, kind and loving. Mathilde is on a relentless search for her fiancee, Manech (Ulliel), he was a soldier who disappeared from the trenches of the Somme during WWI after being sentenced to death for getting himself shot on purpose, an attempt to be sent home early from the front. This search is the centerpiece to the several plots that unfold dring her investigations.

This is a heart and gut wrenching tale as she digs deeper with her dead-set belief that he is still alive she begins to uncover what really happened the day he vanished. The events leading upto his death and then beyond interwines his life with the lives of four other men who supposedly died that day for the same reason he was put to death.

The multiple stories if at first seem a little daunting to follow slip in easily together even with subtitles it is easy to keep track of what is going on. The WWI battle sequences have a gritty style to them that is reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan. Beyond all this at the core of the is a beautiful story of undying love and the lengths the human heart will go to keep it alive.

As always visually Jeunet exceeds magnificently whilst also getting the best out of his actors which includes a french speaking part for Jodie Foster as the wife of one of the missing men. Overall this is just a great example of filmmaking with substance enough to bend even the hard of heart.

The Good: Almost everything. Visually, acting, script. The score is amazing.
The Bad: It's a shame that the character of Mathilde is a carbon copy of Amelie.
The Ugly: Surprisingly violent war sequences.

Overall: How love stories should be told. 9/10.