This French film was formerly one featured in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, it was rated well by the critics, I didn't know anything about it before reading about it, it certainly sounded worthwhile, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen, Alien: Resurrection, Amélie). Basically during The Battle of the Somme in the Second World War, five French soldiers are convicted of self-mutilation, getting themselves deliberately shot, in order to escape military service. One of these court-martialled, wounded soldiers is Manech (Hannibal Rising's Gaspard Ulliel), who along with the others, is condemned to face near certain death in the no man's land between the French and German trench lines. It appears that that all of them were killed in a subsequent battle, but Mathilde (Audrey Tautou), the fiancée of Manech, refuses to give up hope. She begins to uncover clues as to what actually took place on the battlefield. She is driven by the constant reminder of what her fiancé had carved into one of the bells of the church near their home, MMM for Manech Aime Mathilde (Manech Loves Mathilde; a pun on the French word aime, pronounced "M", in English it means "Manech's Marrying Mathilde"). Along the way, Mathilde discovers the brutally corrupt system used by the French government to deal with those who tried to escape the front. She also discovers the stories of the other men who were sentenced to the no man's land as a punishment. With the help of a private investigator, she attempts to find out what happened to her Manech. The story is told both from the point of view of the fiancée in Paris and the French countryside, mostly Brittany, of the 1920s, and through flashbacks to the battlefield. In the end Mathilde finds out her fiancé is alive, but Manech is suffering from amnesia. When they are reunited, he seems to be oblivious of her, all Mathilde can do is sit on the garden chair silently watching Manech with a smile, and tears in her eyes. Also starring Jean-Pierre Becker as Lieutenant Esperanza, Dominique Bettenfeld as Ange Bassignano, Clovis Cornillac as Benoît Notre-Dame, Marion Cotillard as Tina Lombardi, Jean-Pierre Darroussin as Benjamin Gordes, Jodie Foster as Elodie Gordes, Jean-Claude Dreyfus as Commandant Lavrouye, The Missing's Tchéky Karyo as Capitaine Favourier, Amélie's Dominique Pinon as Sylvain and Julie Depardieu (Gérard's daughter) as Véronique Passavant. Tautou gives a good performance as the devoted fiancée doing everything, she can to find her lover, Ulliel is fine as the missing lover, and in their small parts Cottillard and Foster do very well also. I will admit it was difficult to follow at times, having to read subtitles at the same time, but the wartime scenes, full of bloody violence in the trenches, are very memorable, the love story element is nice, and it works reasonably as an investigation plot, all in all it is a worthwhile romantic drama. It was nominated the Oscars for Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction, it was nominated the BAFTA for Best Film not in the English Language, and it was nominated the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. Good!
Review of A Very Long Engagement
