Reviewed by Tim Wong

I SUPPOSE if A Very Long Engagement wasn't an Audrey Tautou film, I might of hated it. Even then, I would have played the bloke card, being too man enough to admit harbouring stray thoughts outside the sticky realms of that bathroom companion, FHM – an alpha male bible well known for its sermons on the ideal female form. A leggy blond she's not, and yet with her button-sized nose, gaping doe eyes, awkward poise, and café latte complexion, it occurred to me, without a hint of blasphemy, that this was the girl.


I was converted. Not in a compulsive, I-will-marry-her-if-it's-the-last-thing-I-do kind of way, but out of what can only be described as asphyxiation. And I recall it vividly: a strange, fleeting sensation of paralysis, unfounded beyond the limits of movie duration, and only ever at the disposal of one other Audrey – the really famous one – who granted, still makes me quiver at the puff of a cigarette.

If this sounds obsessive, it is. It's also enough to compromise critical opinion. I know this, because although I've now recovered to a state of competent hindsight, I sat through this film – like I did with Amelie – without a fidget or a twitch, despite the left side of my brain trying to ambush my senses and awaken me from a fixated high. And sure enough, the come down said it all: a throbbing hangover of wartime nostalgia, dirt showers and a French resistance – to love. As my co-editor says, love stories are an inherently fickle thing, which is a sort of reviewer's olive branch designed to spare a film like Eternal Sunshine from total eclipse, just not a film like this one. A Very Long Engagement has a boy, a girl, and the makings of matrimony, only somewhere in between, forgot to give them that third necessary component – a definition of love.

And by definition, I don't mean carving a triple M into the side of an oak tree, which is about as articulate as Mathilde (Tautou) and Manech's (Gaspard Ulliel) declaration of "love" gets – give or take a quaint series of flashbacks accounting for their playmate-to-fiancée trajectory. No, by love, on a scale as grand as this ought to be (in cinematic terms, of course, as I'm not at all qualified to speak of otherwise), I mean Breaking the Waves love, where it's sacrificial, where forces – human or otherwise – conspire against it. I mean Princess Bride love, where the sheer crux of a bond can cheat death over and over again. I mean Before Sunset love, where the relationship between two souls isn't forged simply in conversation and moments of togetherness, but in their time apart. The interesting, but uncharted territory in A Very Long Engagement, is that these elements are already in place – the obstacle of war, risk of death, prolonged separation – but are ignored in preference for the laziness of assumption, and the cuteness of youth.

And they are a picture of young love: she has skin as smooth as a L'Oreal commercial; he has that boy-band flock of hair and not an inch of stubble to call his own. They get engaged, and then he ships off to war to tread the same muddy Paths of Glory alongside thousands of other miserable Frenchmen, some of whom put a bullet through their hand as a last-gasp escape clause. He follows suit, only to discover that the military frown upon defectors, and come bearing harsh punishment: eviction from the trenches, and into the breach of machine gun fire and mortar rounds to fend for themselves – one handed. Back home, she embarks on a long-winded Cluedo mystery, slowly but surely connecting the dots that will lead her to her dearly beloved, now MIA. It's at this point the munitions of love should be kicking in, only they never really eventuate. Mathilde, rather than draw on this firepower, is a bundle of self-doubt, at times content to leave her lover's fate at the mercy of happenstance. Manech, apart from a fondness for the letter M, doesn't reciprocate either, dwindling in the after-effects of shellshock.

The film also dangerously confuses love with hope. Hope is like trying to win the lottery. Love, according to the non-cynical, is absolute. Mathilde's flip-flop between the two might be respected as a mere flaw of human vulnerability in, say, a neurotic Woody Allen movie, but this is a Jean-Pierre Jeunut film, and a storybook romance – in spite of its affiliation with war. We know this, because it's filmed in antique sepia tones and industrial grey; is guided by floating crane shots and other visual ticks; is embellished with shrinking iris shots and foggy picture-in-picture windows. It's a fairytale in the most innate sense, and doesn't have to be clichéd either – just as long as we're being convinced our hero can overcome his battle wounds, our heroine will remain stoic thoughout, and above all, they'll never once consider throwing in the towel.

Unfortunately, this is lost somewhere in the midst of realism and escape, meaning we're no closer to believing our lovebirds are bound by anything other than good looks. It's also why, ironically enough, the ending rings truest of all. If one thing's irreversible, it's that when we turn that last page, M&M will reunite. And they do, invariably, but not in the passion of a colliding embrace, where the music swells and the camera spins and you just know the director is trying to wring every last teardrop from your eyes. We wouldn't buy this anyway, given that the film has done a pretty lousy job of branding its version of all-conquering love. Except now, it seems Jeunut finally understands the infancy, or prematurity of their union, and promptly hits Ctrl-Alt-Delete, rebooting the very fallibility of the ties that bind, so in another time and place, they can start all over again. It's also as if Jeunut wants to do the same, because if his film were really a fairytale – an Audrey Tautou number with all the vigour of a teaspoon, goodwill to feed the world, and a million facial contortions in tow – it wouldn't have to end like this.