Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a master of whimsy, which works both to his advantage and detriment in his new film, A Very Long Engagement. The French writer-director, best known for the cutesy 2001 romantic comedy Amélie, takes the horrors of World War I trench warfare and combines them with the quirky characters and magical realist touches he brought to his last movie.
He even reunites with Amélie herself, Audrey Tautou, who plays the very Amélie-like Mathilde, a young, wide-eyed optimist whose fiancée, Manech (Gaspard Ulliel), is presumed dead in the waning days of the war. Sentenced to death along with four other men for self-mutilation (a tactic used to get an early discharge), Manech was supposedly killed by German soldiers when he and his comrades were sent over the French army's trench into no-man's land. But Mathilde refuses to believe her beloved is gone and launches a years-long investigation into what really happened, tracking down the other condemned men, their loved ones and any soldiers who were present that day.
Although the story often flashes back to the miserable life in the trenches, and Jeunet doesn't try to hide the harsh realities of war, the rest of the film is full of the lighthearted cuteness and self-consciously overdone visual touches that are his hallmarks. Those touches are wonderful, though—this is one of the best-looking films of the year, as Jeunet makes even the dull grays and browns of the muddy battlefield look luminous.
Mathilde's optimism is infectious, and both the audience and the supporting characters root for her to find Manech alive. But the core mystery is quite confusing, full of complex relationships between people we don't know much about, and Jeunet can't resist going off on quirky tangents that end up with little to do with the main plot. Like Amélie, Engagement is a good half an hour too long, with its quirks eventually becoming a bit oppressive.
In the end, the tension between the wartime mystery and the whimsical love story is a bit much, and Tautou, beatific as always, doesn't quite give Mathilde enough weight. But this is still a very entertaining film, full of warm moments and mellifluous charm, almost enough to make you wonder what that pesky war is doing in there anyway.