Movies - A Very Long Engagement

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	Movies - A Very Long Engagement

A Very Long Engagement (Un long dimanche de fiançailles) is a novel by Sebastien Japrisot, on which a 2004 film directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and distributed by Warner Bros. is based. It is a fictional tale about a young woman's desperate search for her fiancé who might have been killed on a World War I battlefield (the Somme).

The film's tagline is "Never let go."

Plot introduction

Five soldiers are convicted of self-mutilation in order to escape military service during World War I. They are condemned to face near certain death in the no man's land between the French and German trench lines. It appears that all of them were killed in a subsequent battle, but the fiancée of one of the soldiers refuses to give up hope, and begins to uncover clues as to what actually took place on the battlefield. The story is told both from the point of view of the fiancée in Paris and the French countryside - mostly Brittany - of the 1920s, and in flashback to the battlefield.

Cast

Audrey Tautou
- Mathilde
Gaspard Ulliel
- Manech Langonnet, Mathilde's fiancé
Jean-Pierre Becker - Lieutenant Esperanza
Dominique Bettenfeld - Ange Bassignano
Clovis Cornillac - Benoît Notre-Dame
Marion Cotillard
- Tina Lombardi
Jean-Pierre Darroussin - Caporal Benjamin Gordes, aka. Biscotte
Julie Depardieu - Véronique Passavant
Jean-Claude Dreyfus - Commandant Lavrouye
André Dussollier - Pierre-Marie Rouvières
Ticky Holgado
- Germain Pire
Tchéky Karyo
- Captain Favourier
Jérôme Kircher - Bastoche
Denis Lavant - Six-Sous
Chantal Neuwirth - Bénédicte, Mathilde's aunt
Dominique Pinon
- Sylvain, Mathilde's uncle
Albert Dupontel
- Célestin Poux
Jodie Foster
- Élodie Gordes

Other crew

Original music: Angelo Badalamenti

Controversy

The "nationality" of the film has been of some controversy. French films are subsidized by the government through the Centre National de la Cinématographie, and the makers have applied for a US$4.3 million grant. However, rival filmmakers do not believe the film should receive the subsidy because it is not really a French film, because most of the funding for its US$55 million cost came from Warner Bros.

Awards and nominations

The film was nominated for two Oscars, but did not win any. It was not eligible for the Best Foreign-Language Film award.

Academy Award for Best Art Direction
Academy Award for Best Cinematography

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for A Very Long Engagement ]

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