It's been two months since I saw "A Very Long Engagement" at the Royal in Santa Monica, and the appeal of the film continues to warm the cockles of my heart. Simply put, Jean Pierre Jeunet's film is a one of a kind, maybe even a masterpiece. That's a term that's easy to type up but hard to deliver. It begins with the design and texture of the film. Every scene is brilliantly staged, packed with details and historically precise. We are thrust back into the first two decades of the twentieth century, but not in a flat, documentary-sense but in a heightened reality which bears more of a debt to French "comic books" than to any history book.
Then there are all the secondary characters in the film. There are dozens of them, each idiosyncratic, funny, memorable. But any would be masterpiece needs a central character we can root for. Here we have Audrey Tautou as Mathilde, the fiancée who does not accept the news of her beloved's death at the front in World war I. Against all the evidence, against all hope, the film follows her determination to find her beloved Manech. Tautou is in the bulk of the scenes , and she never wears out her welcome in a difficult role because she is playing a head strong, difficult person. At times, we want to wring her neck because determination looks very much like madness or petulance. Yet she wins us over, as the plot twists and turns in ways expected and unexpected.
You have to see this film. I'm concerned that it's not going to find the audience it deserves, which would be a great pity. In fact, I think I've just talked myself into a second viewing !
Then there are all the secondary characters in the film. There are dozens of them, each idiosyncratic, funny, memorable. But any would be masterpiece needs a central character we can root for. Here we have Audrey Tautou as Mathilde, the fiancée who does not accept the news of her beloved's death at the front in World war I. Against all the evidence, against all hope, the film follows her determination to find her beloved Manech. Tautou is in the bulk of the scenes , and she never wears out her welcome in a difficult role because she is playing a head strong, difficult person. At times, we want to wring her neck because determination looks very much like madness or petulance. Yet she wins us over, as the plot twists and turns in ways expected and unexpected.
You have to see this film. I'm concerned that it's not going to find the audience it deserves, which would be a great pity. In fact, I think I've just talked myself into a second viewing !