A Very Long Engagement

Infobox_Film
name = A Very Long Engagement


caption = "A Very Long Engagement" film poster
writer = Sébastien Japrisot (novel),
Jean-Pierre Jeunet,
Guillaume Laurant
starring = Audrey Tautou,
Gaspard Ulliel,
Jodie Foster
Marion Cotillard,
Dominique Pinon,
Chantal Neuwirth,
André Dussolier,
Ticky Holgado
director = Jean-Pierre Jeunet
producer = Francis Boespflug
Bill Gerber
Jean-Louis Monthieux
Fabienne Tsaï
music = Angelo Badalamenti
cinematography = Bruno Delbonnel
editing = Hervé Schneid
distributor = Warner Independent Pictures
released = October 27, 2004
runtime = 133 min
language = French
country = France/U.S.A.(see main article)
budget = $56.6 million
gross = $70 million
website = http://wwws.warnerbros.fr/movies/unlongdimanche/
imdb_id = 0344510
amg_id = 1:294959

"A Very Long Engagement" (French: "Un long dimanche de fiançailles") is a 2004 romance, war film, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and starring Audrey Tautou. It is a fictional tale about a young woman's desperate search for her fiancé who might have been killed on a World War I battlefield (the Somme). It was based on a novel of the same name, written by Sebastien Japrisot, first published in 1993.

Plot

Five soldiers are convicted of self-mutilation in order to escape military service during World War I. They are condemned to face near certain death in the no man's land between the French and German trench lines. It appears that all of them were killed in a subsequent battle, but Mathilde, the fiancée of one of the soldiers, refuses to give up hope and begins to uncover clues as to what actually took place on the battlefield. She is all the while 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", which is pronounced like the letter "M". In the English-language version, this is changed to "Manech Marries Mathilde").

Along the way, she 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. She, with the help of a private investigator attempts to find out what happened to her fiancé. 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 in flashback to the battlefield. In fact, however, the couple are from Cap-Breton, in the Landes department of southwest France.

Cast

* Audrey Tautou - Mathilde Donnay
* Gaspard Ulliel - Manech Langonnet, Mathilde's fiancé
* Jean-Pierre Becker - Segeant Daniel Esperanza
* Jodie Foster - Élodie Gordes
* Dominique Bettenfeld - Ange Bassignano
* Clovis Cornillac - Benoît Notre-Dame
* Marion Cotillard - Tina Lombardi
* Jean-Pierre Darroussin - Corporal Benjamin "Biscotte" Gordes
* André Dussollier - Pierre-Marie Rouvières
* Julie Depardieu - Véronique Passavant
* Albert Dupontel - Célestin Poux
* Tchéky Karyo - Captain Etienne Favourier
* Jean-Claude Dreyfus - Commandant François Lavrouye
* Ticky Holgado - Germain Pire
* Jérôme Kircher - Kléber "Bastoche" Bouquet
* Denis Lavant - Francis "Six-Sous" Gaignard
* Chantal Neuwirth - Bénédicte, Mathilde's aunt
* Dominique Pinon - Sylvain, Mathilde's uncle
* Bouli Lanners - Caporal Urbain Chardolot
* Philippe Duquesne - Staff Sergeant Favart
* Stéphane Butet - Julien Phillipot
* François Levantal - Gaston Thouvenel
* Thierry Gibault - Lieutenant Benoît Etrangin

Awards and reception

The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Art Direction and Academy Award for Best Cinematography at the Oscars. However, it was not selected by the French government as the French submission for the award for Best Foreign Language Film. Marion Cotillard won the César Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance.

The film received generally positive reviews from critics. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 77% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 140 reviews. [cite web|url=http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/very_long_engagement/ |title=A Very Long Engagement - Movie Reviews, Trailers, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes |accessdate=2008-02-06 |publisher=Rotten Tomatoes] Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 76 out of 100, based on 39 reviews. [cite web|url=http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/verylongengagement |title=Very Long Engagement, A (2004): Reviews |accessdate=2008-02-06 |publisher=Metacritic] The film had a production budget of $56.6 million USD and earned $70.1 million in theaters worldwide. [cite web | url=http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=verylongengagement.htm | title=A Very Long Engagement (2004) | publisher=Box Office Mojo | accessdate=2008-02-06]

References

External links

* [http://wwws.warnerbros.fr/movies/unlongdimanche/ "Un long dimanche de fiançailles" on Warner Bros. website] (in French)
*imdb title|id=0344510|title=A Very Long Engagement
*amg movie|id=1:294959|title=A Very Long Engagement
*rotten-tomatoes|id=very_long_engagement|title=A Very Long Engagement
*metacritic film|id=verylongengagement|title=A Very Long Engagement
*mojo title|id=verylongengagement|title=A Very Long Engagement