(U-Wire) – At first glance, it is hard not to compare French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s latest picture, “A Very Long Engagement,” with his last film, 2001’s “Amelie.”
Both stories center around a young woman’s efforts to find love, and both heroines are played by the remarkably charismatic Audrey Tautou, but the similarities end there.
From the first frame of “A Very Long Engagement,” it is apparent that Jeunet was not interested in cloning Amelie, despite its five Oscar nominations and worldwide success.
The film’s opening credits foreshadow its darkness; names are projected over rain-splashed and rusty sheet metal amid flickering lights-stark images of wartime devastation.
Following the credits, viewers are immediately pulled into the story of five condemned French soldiers in World War I. Each is being court-marshaled for self-mutilation – a crime brutally illustrated by five scenes in which the men find singular ways to shoot themselves in the hand.
Their hopes of being sent home with minor injuries are quickly destroyed as the Army, wise to such bailout strategies, places them under arrest. As punishment, they’re brought to the frontlines, sent over the trenches weaponless and left for dead. The method of execution proves inefficient, and their individual fates become unknown, driving the remainder of the film’s story: the search for possible survivors.
The youngest of the condemned soldiers, Manech (Gaspard Ulliel), has left behind a young fiancee named Mathilde (Tautou). When informed of Manech’s death, Mathilde refuses to believe it, and launches an exhaustive investigation to find him from her parents’ home in the French countryside.
When described in a nutshell the story seems cliched: a young couple separated by war; a woman fighting the odds to reunite with her fiance. If made in America, the cast would likely have included Ben Affleck and Sarah Michelle Gellar and been completely trite.
Jeunet brings enough grit and subtle humor to the story to avoid sappiness, even during flashbacks of the protagonists meeting and falling in love. Despite having an outstanding cast, he never relies too heavily on them. His cinematography is always top-notch, with beautiful shots that, in addition to telling a love story, compose a compelling anti-war drama.
The film alternates between two starkly different moods, each strictly following its own color palette: the dark, wet and muddy trenches of World War I, and the warm, beautiful French countryside.
As the movie wears on, the opposing sets begin a gradual shift toward each other, with Mathilde’s search bringing her from the countryside to the slightly grittier streets of Paris, with images of the war flashing back from the frontlines to more civilized, less devastated locales.
Tautou’s performance is fantastic – there are only a handful of actresses in the world with such a dynamic screen presence. Her dark eyes and soft features seem overly cute at first glance, but upon further inspection betray strength and determination. Like in Amelie, her character tends to be shy, but stubborn when pushed.
After seeing both performances, one cannot help but feel that they would be familiar with Tautou’s off-screen persona. She has a way of portraying an intimate connection, a subtlety that fans feel like they alone have noticed.
Like Scarlett Johansson’s turn in “Lost in Translation,” Tautou’s performance in “Amelie” made the world fall in love with her. She is just as likeable as Mathilde, wearing period clothing and walking with a polio-induced limp. Her audience will undoubtedly expand once more.
