'Engagement' worth the wait

Jean-Pierre Jeunet is without a doubt one of the most interesting directors working in film today. He jumped onto the scene with his dark comedy "Delicatessen," tackled some modern day surrealism with "City of Lost Children," dazzled our senses with 2001's foreign hit "Amélie" and even contributed to the Alien Quadrilogy with the stylized bombshell "Alien Resurrection." His latest contribution to modern-day cinema, "A Very Long Engagement," mimics the style of some of his previous works, but is an entirely different cinematic experience.\nThe World War I period romance tells the story of Mathilde and Manech, two young lovers who are set to marry but then split apart by the French's involvement in the war and Manech's duty to serve his country. The film is in many ways a romantic epic, not unlike "Gone With the Wind" or possibly "The English Patient," however it is also one of the finest portrayals of W.W.I, a war the is often overshadowed in film by W.W.II.\nThe film opens in the trenches, where we learn of five soldiers who have been sentenced to death for self-mutilation (a way out of the mud and into the army hospitals). The narrator, Mathilde (Audrey Tautou), tells each soldiers' tale while we watch them march to certain death. One of the soldiers is her fiancée, Manech. This introduction, while containing some of the most daunting, yet incredible war footage filmed to date, is also the start to Mathilde's epic search to find her husband, who she believes to be still alive. \nThough Mathilde's guardians (played by the Jeunet regular Dominique Pinon) try to help her move on, and forget her lost fiancée, she continues her search. By piecing together letters, government documents about Manech's army company and seeking out people who knew her lover during the war, Mathilde creates one of the biggest, most intricate puzzles seen on film in a long time. \nAlong the way she encounters a bartender who sports a mechanical wooden hand, a ex-prostitute turned assassin, a sly Parisian private eye and a French-speaking woman played wonderfully by Jodie Foster, among others. \nJeunet creates an almost dreamlike world for his characters. The production designs in this film are elaborate, as are the costumes, and Jeunet always seems to be looking for a unique way to land his shots. \nThe two-disc DVD release features a number of impressive documentaries ranging from a behind-the-scenes look at the recreation of Paris a lá 1920, and a fascinating look at how Jeunet and his team created the film's epic-scale exploding zeppelin. There are also some decent deleted scenes, and a French (with English subtitles) commentary track from Jeunet himself.\n"A Very Long Engagement" is one of the highlights from 2004 that received very little American attention. The raw war imagery combined with the beautifully told love story makes this a tough yet wonderful piece of storytelling and proves, once again, that Jeunet is on his way to a spot in cinematic history.