Tautou, whose big, dark eyes and purposeful, pouty lips seem made for another era (the silent-screen era), portrays Mathilde, an ethereal creature who walks with a limp (from polio) and waits for her fiance to return from the front. But then she is informed that Manech (Gaspard Ulliel) is dead - one of five soldiers court-martialed for self-inflicting wounds that they believed were going to excuse them from combat.
Instead, their commanding officer has sent them into the no-man's land between the German and French lines, where they must certainly have been killed.
Mathilde, however, is convinced otherwise. She would feel it in her heart if Manech had died. And so she embarks on a twisty hunt for the truth, a bit of dogged sleuthing augmented with flashbacks and letter-writings, postcards and telegrams, and guest turns by Jeunet regulars Ticky Holgado and Dominique Pinon, among others.
Jodie Foster makes an appearance, too, bringing gravity and fluent French to the proceedings, playing a woman who agrees to have the baby of her sterile husband's best friend in order to keep her spouse out of the war. Tautou's brief encounter with the American actress works perfectly.
A Very Long Engagement, adapted from a popular French novel by Sebastien Japrisot, occasionally shocks with its vivid violence, the bomb-propelled chunks of flesh, the charred limbs, the aching, shivering fear that fries the synapses of muddied, bloodied troops. At the same time, Jeunet maintains a kaleidoscopic, big-movie majesty - a sweeping, cinematic style that never lets you forget you're watching spectacle.
A detective story, a war movie, an antiwar movie, a love story, A Very Long Engagement probably has too many elements - and too many characters - for its own good. But its heart, like its heroine's, is in the right place.
Contact movie critic Steven Rea at 215-854-5629 or srea@phillynews.com.
Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/stevenrea.
A Very Long Engagement *** (out of four stars)
Produced by Francis Boespflug,
directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, written by Jeunet and Guillaume Laurant, photography by Bruno Delbonnel, music by Angelo Badalamenti, distributed by Warner Independent Pictures. In French with subtitles.
Running time: 2 hours, 35 mins.
Mathilde. . . Audrey Tautou
Manech. . . Gaspard Ulliel
Esperanza. . . Jean-Pierre Becker
Germain Pire. . . Ticky Holgado
Parent's guide: R (violence, sexuality)
Playing at: Ritz Five
