How sad is this?

Good movie but grossly overrated

Fantastic!

The acting in this movie is really good.

This is exactly the type of weepy, sentimental, "classical" period drama/war romance. The acting is quite good. Jodie foster and Marion Cotillard shine the brightest from the supporting players (and Marion Cotillard is the reason I sought this out, because of praise for her). She was quite good and very effective in her scenes, but a very small role, definitely smaller than I ever expected. As it is, Audrey Tatou is also very good, and she does the most she can. Really, it's hard to fault the film for what it does because a lot of people are sure to love this sort of thing. The problem is that it's basically just the type of period cliché that you come to expect, one that's supposed to be grand and sweeping in the everyday music and emotions that are seen. Not a fan.

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.

The film A Very Long Engagement is one that I have to give two thumbs up. This French romance captures the true essence of what a romance should be like. What I enjoyed most about the film was how it takes the viewer on the same emotional journey that the main character Mathilde goes on. We feel her hope, her pain and her love for her fiancé as she searches for him. There were a few scenes that I could have done without, due to the amount of blood and gore they included. However, as a romance film during war time, it is to be expected. One particular idea that I felt was overwhelming during the film was that true love perseveres at all cost. While it may sound cliché, Mathilde did not give up hope that Manech was still alive even after she was told directly by another solider that he saw him get shot. Even as she stat his tombstone, she held on to her undying love for him. Another idea that I found interesting was how the military officials in the film where made to seem corrupt. This underlying message made the film feel as though it had a slight political agenda to reveal the way corruption and secrets are kept in the military. To be such an amazing film there must be an amazing director behind the work. That director is Jean-Pierre Jeunt when looking up information about Jeunt; I was amazed to find that he had actually been self-taught. As shocking as it may sound his great success in the directing business is the result of an interest in cinema. He started simply directing commercials, he then began to make connections and his career launched. At age fifty-nine Jeunt has been nominated for an Oscar and won thirty-nine various awards. He is known for films like, Amelie, The City of Lost Children and Delicatessen. Overall, the film was beautifully done and embodied a "French-ness" that relayed to the audience information about French film making and culture. This could be seen first and foremost through the passionate and well placed love making scenes in the film. The French in many instances are not afraid to place nudity on the big screen or capture passionate sex scenes in their films. Also the various moments in the film that point to cultural norms show this movies "French-ness." For example the family can often be seen eating crêpes together at the breakfast table, and there is even a hint to the way the French love to go on strike, through a comment made about a newspaper strike. As previously stated, I believe this film was beautiful cinematically and in regards to the love story it follows. I would recommend this movie to anyone over the age of sixteen. Just be prepared to reach for the Kleenex as it is a tear jerker.

I'm pretty hard to please when it comes to film so I am so pleased that French cinema exists. I just can't even watch Hollywood films anymore. They are even contriving 'indie' films now, and the soul has been relentlessly driven out of everything that issues forth so that the best of it is just not too trite and sentimental. When a French film is sentimental it actually brings tears to your eyes. This film is about a lot of things; the imagined innocence of childhood; the reality of growing up; the kindness of strangers; the tragedy and pain of happiness ripped away. We peep over the shoulder of our protagonist, praying for her hopes to be realised but wanting to say to her 'I'm sorry my little one, so sorry ,but life must go on' In the midst of it all, the barbarity and corruption of War-its utter pointlessness and criminality. We see the damage it does to all the humans involved; there are no heroes involved, just real human lives being torn to shreds. And what else? Ah yes. Poignancy, humour and life.