What a flick! This movie deserves a much wider audience. And if you're an American who's "allergic" to reading sub-titles, get over it. You owe it to yourself to watch this movie. The story sweeps you along and features an engaging cast, unbelievably fine production values, and cinematography that's like fine French paintings come to life.
"A Long Engagement" is by the same director as "Amelie," Jean-Pierre Jeunet. It also features the same Audrey Tautou in the lead role. But whereas "Amelie" played like an amusing soufflé, "A Long Engagement" is darker and earthier, like truffles dug out of French soil.
Tautou plays a crippled girl who won't give up searching for her fiancée, reportedly killed by his own troops for self-mutilation during World War I. The scenes in the trenches of the Somme are some of the most horrific war scenes ever. The setting of the First World War was what drew me to the movie. The "Great War" has been overshadowed, in history and certainly in cinema, by the Second World War. But as director Jeunet shows so powerfully in "A Long Engagement," it was a war with unique terrors and a story we have yet to understand.
So watch the movie. Then take the time to also watch the "making of" extras on the DVD. It shows the love French people have for the art of movie making--a love which shows on every frame of "A Long Engagement."
"A Long Engagement" is by the same director as "Amelie," Jean-Pierre Jeunet. It also features the same Audrey Tautou in the lead role. But whereas "Amelie" played like an amusing soufflé, "A Long Engagement" is darker and earthier, like truffles dug out of French soil.
Tautou plays a crippled girl who won't give up searching for her fiancée, reportedly killed by his own troops for self-mutilation during World War I. The scenes in the trenches of the Somme are some of the most horrific war scenes ever. The setting of the First World War was what drew me to the movie. The "Great War" has been overshadowed, in history and certainly in cinema, by the Second World War. But as director Jeunet shows so powerfully in "A Long Engagement," it was a war with unique terrors and a story we have yet to understand.
So watch the movie. Then take the time to also watch the "making of" extras on the DVD. It shows the love French people have for the art of movie making--a love which shows on every frame of "A Long Engagement."