France, 2004
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Score: *****Year’s 10 Best

If Christmas be the season of hope, joy and good cheer then UN LONG DIMANCHE DE FIANCAILLES (A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT) must surely be the perfect movie for Christmastide.  Based on the acclaimed French novel by Sabastien Japrisot, the film concerns a young woman’s quest to find her fiancé, feared dead during World War 1.  ENGAGEMENT once again brings together AMELIE’s Audrey Tatou and her director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet. If anyone can remember how sweet that film was, then one would know what to expect for ENGAGEMENT.

The basic premise of the movie is that if fiancé Manech (Gaspard Ulleil from BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF and the recent SUMMER THINGS not released here) was dead, Mathilde (Audrey Tatou) would surely know.  Manech is one of five wounded soldiers court-martialed and posted to no-man’s land between the French and German armies to die.  But whenever Mathilde receives some news which could mean that her lover is gone, she has the faith, hope and cheerful nature to go on searching for more.  She hires a private investigator (the excellent Jean-Pieere Darroussin also in the currently FEUX ROUGES playing this Christmas), who charges a miniscule sum.  Would anyone ever think of benefiting from ones desperate search for ones lost love?

Japrisot’s novels (others being ONE DEADLY SUMMER, THE SLEEPING CAR MURDER) translate very well to the screen.  For one, the sub-plots involving the other 4 condemned solders serve relevant ties to the main story.  Jenuet and Guillaume Maurant, who adapted the novel, are smart enough to recognize what works and what doesn’t.  Mathilde’s love is contrasted with a Sicilian’s, by the name of Tina Lombardi (Marion Cotillard) whose own lover was shot in no-man’s land.  Tina takes revenge (shades here of Francois Truffaut’s THE BRIDE WORE BLACK) by making it her quest to murder those responsible one by one.

The sub plots in the story do not fall in chronological order.  When the viewer first witnesses Tina’s gruesome murder (by chandelier) of the Colonel (as in a few other scenes), the viewer is unclear what is happening till more is revealed later on in the film.  The technique works well as more satisfaction is derived from putting pieces of a puzzle together than in a story told in a straight forward fashion. 

ENGAGEMENT boasts several of Jeunet’s regulars besides actors Tatou and Dominique Pinon (DELICATSSEN).  His casting director, director of photography, scriptwriter and editor all worked in his other films.  And it shows as all departments score full marks.  Most of the war scenes are shot in the pale yellow of faded old photographs.  The trenches the soldiers have dug in look professionally wretched.  But Jeunet takes risks in inserting some graphic and violent scenes (falling glass piercing a body; bodies blown to bits by bombs) not seen in his other works, contrasting the innocence of first love.  Jeunet’s weird sense of humour is again abundant (the cracking of walnuts by a mechanical hand; the postman deliberately destroying the gravel every time he delivers some news) as his contagious sentiment and romanticism.  The most effective scene is Mathilde’s aunt crying in a car at one point as she is so sorry she did not have the faith Mathilde has.

ENGAGEMENT is the first Jeunet film that boasts a solid story line.  Like many of Jeunet’s other films particularly DELICATESSEN, THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN and even the Hollywood ALIEN IV - RESURRECTION, fantastic visuals are created out of musty surroundings (here the war trenches look handsomely realistic), human characterizations evolve out of monstrosities and nightmarish illusions develop into hopes and dreams come true.  Jeunet is clearly a master at making feel-good films and though Christmas is never once displayed in his film, the sentiment and feeling of the joyous spirit is very much alive.  Only the French can make a feel good antiwar movie.  ENGAGEMENT opens in Toronto on December 17th.

Review by Gilbert Seah.