OVP: A Very Long Engagement (2004)

Film: A Very Long Engagement (2004)
Stars: Audrey Tautou, Gaspard Ulliel, Dominique Pinon, Chantal Neuwirth, Marion Cotillard, Jodie Foster
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Cinematography, Art Direction)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

We're kicking off a slightly short week (Happy Labor Day y'all!) for the blog, but it should be a full one.  I'm hoping by end-of-week that we'll have analysis of our House races, another Saturday installment in our month devoted to Gina Lollobrigida, and the completion of the 2005 OVP (and we'll be kicking right off into the next year on Monday, as I'm already set for our 12th year).  We will also have four reviews for our film theme this week, devoted to my favorite category at the Oscars, Cinematography.  Each film this week was cited in Oscar's most beautiful, and frequently classiest, category, and to kick things off we're going to go across the pond to France, with the star-studded A Very Long Engagement.

(Spoilers Ahead) A Very Long Engagement is about Mathilde (Tautou), a woman in World War I who is searching for her fiancé Manech (Ulliel), who was sent to "No Man's Land" for a self-inflicted wound (essentially a death sentence).  She is convinced that he did not die, and instead will come back to her someday despite all evidence to the contrary.  As she works to discover what happened in the "last seconds" of her beloved's life, she uncovers multiple cruelties that happened to men who could not handle the war, and the callousness of the government in forcing enlisted soldiers to suddenly have bravery beyond-their-years.  As she continues, she finally finds that Manech has not died, but is instead in a hospital with amnesia, and though in the film's final moments it's understood that he does not recognize her, she is still happy to know that he is alive, and he did not leave her.

A Very Long Engagement was the much-anticipated follow-up to Jeunet's beloved Amelie, a film that I have never seen (and a friend of mine who I know will read this article has chastised me for it, as it's his favorite film) and therefore don't have a built-in appreciation for Tautou in her iconic role.  I will get to the film eventually (it was cited for multiple Oscars), but while I appreciate what she's doing here, her character isn't interesting on-the-page for my money, and she doesn't expand it enough.  It's Cotillard, as a strange woman bent on revenge, that pretty much steals the whole movie (this was her pre-Oscar, and thus why you might not know she's in the film in the same way you would Tautou or Foster).  But without a compelling central character, and with a convoluted run-time & script, A Very Long Engagement is the kind of movie you know has a good story, but doesn't know how to ground it cinematically, and thus isn't bad, but isn't good at the same time.

The film won two Academy Award nominations, one for Cinematography and one for Art Direction.  Our theme this week is on cinematography, but it's the lesser of the two citations.  The film relies on "yellow" as a recurring motif-the movie is bathed in a golden lens, and this gives it a distinctive palette, but I find that reliance on lenses almost never completely work.  The lenses separate the film into warm peacetime and cool wartime colors, but it's a bit broad, and it makes it always feel like it's golden outside when it's cloudy.  The vistas, though, look lovely regardless of the marring the production team is doing, but I just wasn't onboard.  Art Direction was better.  The movie only occasionally feels like a set, and frequently it has a lot of great detail (like the library, or the overstuffed houses).  The prisons are a bit barren & feel slightly off (too clean), but all-in-all the art direction is a worthy find for the Academy, who doesn't often nominate foreign-language films in the tech categories.