Wintertijd

Pourquoi pas Jippie Tralala?

Manech in No man's land

When Lisa and I found out that Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the director of Le fabuleux destin d'Am?lie Poulain, had made another movie with the beautiful Audrey Tatou playing a lead role we immediately decided we had to go see Un long dimanche de fian?ailles.

Last night we finally did, and I tell you, we didn't get disappointed. The story is quite intricate, but it revolves around Audrey's character Mathilde, a young, orphaned woman who was crippled by polio as a child. She is a loner because of her disability but meets her childhood friend and later lover and fianc?, Manech, at the age of 9.

In 1917, this young man is sent to the front at Somme, where the madness of the war drives him to self mutilation to get out of the war. He is sentenced to death by the army along with four other men for similar cowardice. Instead of getting executed, they end up at a trench called Bingo Crepiscule and get sent in to no man's land to act as cannon fodder for the Germans.

Three years later, Mathilde still refuses to believe that Manech is dead and starts a search for him. With the help of persistence, coincidence, a lawyer, a private eye and a good deal of luck, she unravels the mystery surrounding these five men's fate.

Jeunet already showed a tendency to shoot scenes of staggering beauty in Amelie, always working with a yellow filter to get that warm, comfortable and agreeable feeling in his scenery, and this time he outdid himself. The warmth is there in the scenes in the twenties Paris and the country-side, but he used a cooler and more grim visual style to shoot the horrors of the Trench wars.

All of the movie is drenched in his somewhat surreal style and the grimness of the War scenes is lightened by his quirky sense of humour that is found throughout the film. There are farting dogs, mad postmen on bycicles, odd characters, and hilarious bits of dialogue ("Bingo Crepiscule? Pourqoi pas Jippie Tralala" gets uttered by two characters independently of each other) to keep the movie's humane feel intact.

To cut a long story short, I think this is one of the best movies I've seen in the theatre in a while. It's got colourful characters, grim action, wonderful humour, an interesting plot, great scenery and good acting all round.

Posted by Chris at January 31, 2005 01:09 PM