Product Description

The film is set in France near the end of World War I in the deadly trenches of the Somme, in the gilded Parisien halls of power, and in the modest home of an indomitable provincial girl. It tells the story of this young woman's relentless, moving and sometimes comic search for her fiancC)e, who has disappeared. He is one of five French soldiers believed to have been court-martialed under mysterious circumstances and pushed out of an allied trench into an almost-certain death in no-man's land. What follows is an investigation into the arbitrary nature of secrecy, the absurdity of war, and the enduring passion, intuition and tenacity of the human heart.

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
Deleted Scenes:With Director audio commentary
Documentaries:Paris in the 20'sThe Zepplin Explosion
Featurette:The Making of A Very Long Engagement
Theatrical Trailer

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5753 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2005-07-12
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: French, German
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 133 minutes

Amazon.com
Both epic and intimate, A Very Long Engagement reunites Audrey Tautou and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the star and director of the hugely popular Amelie. A young woman named Mathilde (Tautou, Happenstance)separated from her lover by World War I refuses to believe he's been killed and launches an investigation into his fate--an investigation that spins in all directions, creating dozens of miniature stories (including that of an Italian prostitute avenging the death of her own lover by elaborate means) that shift to and fro in time. The dazzling curlicues of narrative put brutality and tenderness back to back, shifting between crushing inevitabilities and miraculous rescues with deft storytelling skill and the lush visual style of the director of Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children. Through it all, Tautou--fierce and luminous--anchors the movie effortlessly. She's among the most emotionally engaging actresses in cinema, with the kind of expressive beauty that transcends language. A gorgeous, far-reaching film; the huge cast also includes Jodie Foster (The Silence of the Lambs), Gaspard Ulliel (Strayed), and Dominique Pinon (Alien: Resurrection). --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

amazing
i love french movies. this movie is better than the notebook. i say this because it's kind of similar to the notebook, only this one is french but even more amazing and romantic. where as, mathilde never gives up on her love manech, in the notebook that other girl (rachel macadams? or however you spell it) does and finds some other guy. in this movie you see how they fall in love when they were kids in the movie. it's so cute. i love it. it made me cry so many times at first watching it. i still do every so often hahaha. its just so romantic, funny, cute, amazing...the scenery is beautiful too. and i LOVE gaspard ulliel :]...he's the greatest actor, especially in this movie. nothing i can say in any of his movies are bad acting. i just loved this movie. audrey in the movie was really great too. people say she's a bad actress, but i don't think so. i think she played this part really well.

Heartfelt, tender, gorgeous movie
What a beautiful movie! I decided to own this it certainly bears repeated viewing! It is gorgeous cinematically and has that quirky "Amelie" style. The back-drop of the First World War is vividly evoked and Audrey Tautou is particularly enchanting. A MUST SEE!

Excellent
With the possible exception of America's Claire Danes, the French actress Audrey Tautou is probably the most interesting actress alive to simply watch onscreen. It's not that Danes and Tautou are not beautiful, they are. But they are not gorgeous screen sirens; they have an accessibility to them that makes ordinary men feel that they could some day have a girl like that fall in love with them. This is because they radiate, they simple glow with presence. Tautou, who first came to American filmgoers' attention with the smash hit comedy Amélie, is also the lead star of A Very Long Engagement, the new film by the director of that earlier film, Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Tautou not only engages with her ability to simply radiate, but because she can do more acting simply with her face than most actresses can do with their whole bodies, and in this film she shows it, playing a World War One era polio victim in search of her lover who is presumed dead.
The film is gorgeously shot, in unrealistic tones- ranging from golden to sepia to gray, in the sense of the trench warfare....This is a great film, with scenes of battle carnage every bit the equal of the ridiculously overlauded Saving Private Ryan, but it also has believable and identifiable characters, moments of great humor and depth, and a true actress for the ages in Tautou. Whether she is scheming, playing the tuba, consoling herself, or playing a little mind game to bargain for the safe return of her lover (which she does several times in the film), Tautou dominates the screen like few actors can....
A Very Long Engagement, adapted from a French novel by Sebastian Japrisot, is a truly terrific film, and even though it really isn't a strict war film, I would rank it right up there, just behind the best war films ever made- the aforementioned Paths Of Glory, A Thin Red Line by Terrence Malick, 1997's Regeneration, from the U.K., and Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola. Audrey Tautou is a star of the highest order, whose comparisons to that other filmic Audrey- Hepburn, are apt.