Audrey Tautou and Jean-Pierre Jeunet took the magical realist story of a shy and simple girl that thrived on making others happy and turned it not only into a critical darling but also a worldwide box-office sensation. Le fabuleux destin  d’Amelie Poulain (or simply Amelie in English) showed us a world in which nothing, or so it seemed, could go wrong, and where people’s idiosyncrasies where fun rather than annoying. Tautou and Jeunet have now teamed up to redress the balance somewhat; their new film Un long dimanche de fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement) is their magical realistic take on a tragic love story set against the First World War. The characters' still have their idiosyncrasies, but they also have to face the separation, disease, death and destruction that are part of real life, and especially of war.

 

Tautou stars as Mathilde, and we are introduced to her (and a few other major characters) in the way of Amelie: through their oddities. She lives with her aunt and uncle on the coast of Britanny, and when still a little girl she meets a boy whose father runs the lighthouse; this impish, nimble creature takes an immediate liking to her. They grow up happy together, until France findsitself on the eve of war. Manech (Gaspard Ulliel, from Le dernier jour/The Last Day) is now eighteen years old and has been called to the front. The horrors he faces there lead him and four of his comrades to do the unthinkable: they wound themselves or each other in the hope of being sent home. They soon are discovered, court-martialed and sentenced to death by execution. A high ranking official sends them off into no man's land, the zone between the French and German trenches, certain they will face immediate death.

 

Mathilde is told of the fate of her loved one, but being Mathilde she does not believe he has died. She feels that somehow she would have known. No-one has actually seen him die, and thus, shortly after the war ends, she sets out on a quest to discover what happened to Manech and his friends who were sent off into no man’s land to die without being seen. Maybe they escaped, Mathilde hopes, using the same circumstances.

 

The story, taken from the hugely successful novel by Sébastien Japrisot, is about many things  at once. It is about the strength of love and hope, about defeat and death, patriotism and friendship, destruction and recollection, determination and coincidence. Because of this, Jeunet’s adaptation might at first seem a bit fragmentary, as there are so many themes, strands and storylines to deal with, but as the story builds to its harrowing but ultimately beautiful conclusion, it gathers momentum like a giant snowball that will strike the audience with incredible force at the end. In the theatre I attended, no-one uttered a word or got up before the end-credits had finished and the lights had come up.

It is clear, once the final credits roll, that there has been a maître at the helm who has had complete and masterful control over every aspect of the film. It thrives with lush photography, its beautiful score, its editing and script and, last but not least, the spectacular performances by the actors. Ulliel has a star-making turn as the innocent Manech, a magnetic screen presence (especially in his spellbinding final scene) and Tautou has been able to create a character that elaborates on Amelie but at the same time is 180 degrees different. Mathilde has a depth and profound sadness of someone worn out by life (though not defeated by it in the least!) that makes the character of Amelie look like a cardboard cut-out. The supporting cast is really the crème-de-la-crème  of French cinema, with roles for Clovis Cornillac (Gilles in La femme de Gilles/Gilles' wife), Jean-Pierre Darroussin (Feux Rouges/Red Lights), Jean-Claude Dreyfuss (Two brothers) and last but not least (at least not French!) Jodie Foster.

 

Un long dimanche de fiançailles is  one of those cinematic gems that will only approve upon repeated viewing, revealing more about its themes and characters at every turn. At its heart it is an idiosyncratic love story, but to label Un long dimanche... as only that would be like saying that the French and the Americans have usually been allies: it is true, but it is much more complicated than that.

 

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