A Very Long Engagement
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| A Very Long Engagement | |
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 "A Very Long Engagement" film poster |
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| Directed by | Jean-Pierre Jeunet |
| Produced by | Francis Boespflug Bill Gerber Jean-Louis Monthieux Fabienne Tsaï |
| Written by | 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 |
| Music by | Angelo Badalamenti |
| Cinematography | Bruno Delbonnel |
| Distributed by | Warner Independent Pictures |
| Release date(s) | October 27, 2004 |
| Running time | 133 min |
| Language | French |
A Very Long Engagement (French: Un long dimanche de fiançailles) is a novel by Sebastien Japrisot, first published in 1993. 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). Jean-Pierre Jeunet directed a 2004 film of the same name based on the novel.
The film's tagline is "Never let go."
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[edit] Plot introduction
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 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. 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.
[edit] Cast
- Audrey Tautou - Mathilde Donnay
- Gaspard Ulliel - Manech Langonnet, Mathilde's fiancé
- Jean-Pierre Becker - Segeant Daniel Esperanza
- Dominique Bettenfeld - Ange Bassignano
- Clovis Cornillac - Benoît Notre-Dame
- Marion Cotillard - Tina Lombardi
- Jean-Pierre Darroussin - Corporal Benjamin "Biscotte" Gordes
- Julie Depardieu - Véronique Passavant
- Jean-Claude Dreyfus - Commandant François Lavrouye
- André Dussollier - Pierre-Marie Rouvières
- Ticky Holgado - Germain Pire
- Tchéky Karyo - Captain Etienne Favourier
- 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
- Albert Dupontel - Célestin Poux
- Jodie Foster - Élodie Gordes
- Philippe Duquesne - Staff Sergeant Favart
- Stéphane Butet - Julien Phillipot
- François Levantal - Gaston Thouvenel
- Thierry Gibault - Lieutenant Benoît Etrangin
[edit] Other crew
- Original music: Angelo Badalamenti
[edit] Controversy
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The "nationality" of the film has been of some controversy. French films are subsidized by the government through the Centre National de la Cinématographie, and the filmmakers applied for a US$4.3 million grant. However, rival filmmakers complained that the film should not receive the subsidy, arguing that it is not a true French film, given that most of the funding for its $55 million budget came from the American studio Warner Bros.
[edit] Awards and nominations
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.
[edit] Notes
- The initials MMM are carved several times by Manech, the fiancé of the heroine Mathilde. They stand for "Manech aime Mathilde", "Manech loves Mathilde". This is a pun: in French the word "aime" ("loves") is pronounced very similarly as the letter M. In the English subtitles, the initials were preserved by substituting the wording "Manech's Marrying Mathilde".
- The Albatross aircraft featured was actually an American Stearman, as flying Albatrosses are no longer to be found.
- The English translation of the title creates a pun, possibly unintentionally. Engagement could refer either to the marriage of Manech and Mathilde or could refer to the military engagement.
- This is the second movie by the director to feature Audrey Tautou, and the fifth to feature Dominique Pinon
[edit] External links
- A Very Long Engagement at the Internet Movie Database
- Un long dimanche de fiançailles on Warner Bros. website (in French)
- Review of A Very Long Engagement
Delicatessen (with Marc Caro 1991) • The City of Lost Children (with Marc Caro, 1995) • Alien: Resurrection (1997) • Amélie (2001) • A Very Long Engagement (2004)
