A Very Long Engagement – (French, subtitles) In January 1917, five French soldiers have been sentenced to be executed for self-mutilation (each a wound to a hand); they are released into the no-man’s land between the French and German trenches. Three years later 19-year-old Mathilde (Audrey Tautou), who is an orphan, is lame from polio, and plays a tuba, begins a confusing search to determine if her fiancé Manech, one of the condemned soldiers, might somehow have survived the ordeal. Jodie Foster unexpectedly appears in the role of a wife of a soldier involved in the fate of the five men. The engagement has the double meaning of a betrothal and the war itself. Bons mots in the dialogue and stunning imagery in the photography.

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Copyright © 2006 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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