This film left me rather cold to be honest. I found it incredibly difficult to keep track of who was who (maybe the glass of red wine I had before going in didn't help!)and as I kept forgetting who was Biscotte and who was Bachelotte and who was Machin-truc in Bingo-Crepescule it all got a bit too much. All those years of watching modernist master-pieces don't pay off when it comes to following plot! It was an easy film to sit back and admire the cinematography in, and the references to early cinema - the realism of Lumieres and Melies' fantastical journeys both play a role here - and on one level it works (Virilio's thesis on war and cinema comes to mind) but the whimsical aestheticisation of mass slaughter is a mite troubling at times. The ending is however WONDERFUL and very moving. It was hard to see how the film could avoid schmaltz or heartbreak, and the ending was judged perfectly. Mathilde comes to understand that what she was looking for, even if she finds it, won't be what she wanted, because the War has changed everything. Nothing can be the same again. And that message is delivered with a subtle finesse that makes the film.
Review of A Very Long Engagement
