The perils of long engagements
A Very Long Engagement , the newest work from Amelie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, is beautiful, frustrating, moving and wildly imaginative, with the stylistic flourishes that made Amelie a delight. It gives a picture of a different kind of life - life in the gore of World War I, and with it mixes love and war, graphic violence and human tenderness.
The plot's intricacies go deep, but the basic tale is that of a physically impaired woman (portrayed by the charming, elfin Au drey Tautou, the star of Amelie ) and her quest to find her lost fiancée, who was snatched away from her and brought into the war. As she goes on her condition worsens and every one around her thinks her mission is a foolish waste of time. But she keeps at it, contacting anyone who may have any clue as to where her love is.
Flashing from harrowing war scenes to glimpses of Tautou and her lover, Engagement makes for a very powerful picture. The war imagery is startlingly realistic and difficult to watch, and Tautou's desperation is moving.
Jodie Foster, who has been absent from the cinema lately, returns with a miniature tour-de-force performance here, entering halfway in and speaking French flawlessly.
Yet, despite all of its fantastic visual acrobatics, heartfelt story and captivating performances, A Very Long Engagement simply has too much, even for its a little over two hour running time. The opening of the film, which introduces a handful of characters, is hard to follow. The names of many of the characters are similar, and keeping them straight can be trying. The film also has side plots galore, and although there is a particularly fascinating one involving a murderous prostitute, it feels a bit bloated at times.
Still, I cannot discourage anyone from seeing it and all its wonders - too many, in my opinion, though it seems churlish to castigate a film for offering too much of a good thing.
A Very Long Engagement is currently playing in the Ann Arbor area.
Watch for ‘Undertow'
Undertow , the latest and greatest work from All the Real Girls director David Gordon Green, is a radical departure from Girls , and trades in fanciful romance for unadulterated suspense. It's about two young Southern boys in pursuit of their homicidal uncle through the woods of rural Georgia. The filmed chase is thrilling, lyrical and disturbing.
The story is relatively simple: Chris Munn (Jamie Bell, the British actor who previously won over the hearts of audiences as the title character in Billy Elliott ) portrays the oldest of the brothers, who live under the supervision of their apparently exhausted and depressed father (Dermot Mulroney). When their uncle Deel (a menacing Josh Lucas) comes to town, Chris senses trouble ahead. After an explosion of violence that leaves the boys' father dead, Deel pursues the boys through the woods of the deep South so he can erase the only people who were witnesses to the brutal death of their father.
Undertow makes for 107 minutes of breathtaking, almost overwhelming, exhilaration. Underneath the guise of a conventional thriller lies the singular work from one of America's most promising new directors. The plot may seem reminiscent of Laughton's Night of the Hunter . Though like that film, it is very much an exercise in style and suspense. Opening with a mesmerizing title sequence that evokes the rustic appearance of 70s exploitation films and closing with a dreamlike sequence in black and white, Undertow stands as a minor masterwork.
Undertow is also a step up for the already talented director. It is his first film to cast seemingly known stars, such as Lucas, Mulroney, and the astonishing Bell, who drops his British accent for an unmistakably southern one, while also employing Philip Glass, the minimalist composer of The Hours , as well as the Qatsi films, who here composes his most effective (and least exasperating) score since Candyman , if not ever. Green, whose pastoral, poetic style has often been compared to that of Terence Malick, has Malick on his production team.
The resulting film is exceedingly beautiful despite its griminess and endlessly thrilling, and though its storyline is not strikingly original in any sense, this is anything but a conventional film.
It is my choice for the best thriller, as well as one of the very best (and strangely underappreciated) movies of 2004. It is slated for a commercial DVD release in April of this year.