She'll Always be Amelie to Me

I went and saw A Long Engagement last night, the newest offering from the folks who brought us 2001's splendid fantasy on film Amelie. A Long Engagement is a wonderful follow up, combining fully human characters and the childlike obsessions we carry with us into adulthood into a very sweet and mature tale. A young woman searches for her fiance who was condemned to die with four other French soldiers at the front lines of WWI and tossed over the fortifications into no man's land. She is certain that if he were dead, she would feel it, and even three years later she is unable to let him go.

It plays out like a mystery, with Mathilde engaging the services of a private detective to help her track down leads for what may be other of the condemned men. The cast sparkles, and director Jean-Pierre Jeunet's eye for the oddity and quirks that define us sets this film apart.

Audrey Tatau will likely always be Amelie to me, but A Long Engagement is the sort of sweet and funny movie that I wish was made more often, where a director lets eccentricity define the characters without mocking them in the slightest, and an interesting story unfolds seemingly effortlessly before our eyes.