It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

A Brilliant Conflict

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This film is directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and starring Audrey Tautou ( famous for the movie Amilie ), This french film Got 7.8/10 ( IMDb rating ) and 85% vote ( Rotten Tomato ). It is based on Drama | Mystery | Romance , & won more than 30 awards on that time. Plot - Five French 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's Marrying 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 through flashbacks to the battlefield.

A powerful and emotional war drama from French auteur Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Audrey Tautou leads us through an engaging and well-crafted story which sweeps us into the world of its characters, whom are established and well developed as the story progresses. The film itself is visually arresting with stunning cinematography. It was actually Bruno Delbonnel's visuals that acted as one of the man aspects that allured my interest in the film, it's a visual powerhouse blending the gritty conventions of war with scenes of a more romantic and dramatic style. A harrowing and emotional account of World War I from the perspective of French soldiers and civilians.

Audrey Tautou proves once again that she is one of the very few actresses alive able to carry a film on her shoulders. As Mathilde, a twenty year old young lady, determined to prove her fiancé is alive, after hearing that he has died during a battle as a French soldier with Germans, she spends all of her time and most of her money on that mission.Manech is one of five soldiers sentenced to death during World War I, and while a bloody battle in a trench surrounds a chaotic situation, an officer comes up with the idea to set the five condemned men to walk out towards the Germans on the other side of the fire fight. The rest of the story alternates between war scenes and a mystery led by Mathilde and a detective she has hired to find Manech, who she believes to the point of obsession, is alive. The story is a puzzle, which deserves complete attention from the viewer. Tautou is so compelling and believable as the woman in love, that I could watch her read from a phone book, and never lose interest. The script is excellent and the sets exquisite, and director Jean Pierre Jeunet's eye for detail is perfect. A Very Long Engagement is a very good movie.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet's epic tale of love amidst the backdrop of The Great War is terribly sad, empty, loving and heartfelt all simultaneously. It captures exquisitely what it might have been like to be among the unspeakable carnage and destruction which characterized the trench warfare of the war as well as tells a thoroughly engaging and brightly acted love story about a determined young woman searching and hoping that her fiancée remains alive after the war.Audrey Tautou, perhaps the closest actress alive who resembles Audrey Hepburn in both looks and personality, plays Mathilde, a polio-stricken orphan living in the French countryside with her aunt and uncle holding on to the belief that her lover, thin and fresh-faced Manech, will return to her from the war. Jeunet cuts swiftly between her tale which she narrates and that of another woman in search of her lost love. This second female is played by Marion Cotillard in a brilliant performance filled with both intense passion and longing sadness. In many ways, her character sits at the crossroads which this movie places itself at. The intention of looking to intensely at the destruction of the Great War and the long-term effects it had on society is summarized in her actions, which are grotesque and yet strangely understandable.Tautou carries the film mostly but Jeunet's direction is impeccable. The cinematography is gorgeous in its widescreen landscapes depicting both the heavenly countryside and the hellish warfield as accurately as possible. The narrative structure is free-flowing and engaging, leaving us to pick up the pieces along with Tautou as she searches. Anyone interested in early twentieth century history should see this film for its accurate and bold look at how one war changed the course of the humanity's future while everyone else should see it for its visual strength, bold narrative, breathtaking acting and themes as universal as the events it depicts. This is truly a modern classic.