A romantic, comic detective story set on the French battle fields of WW1 seems a likely vehicle for the director of City of Lost Children. While Jean-Pierre Jeunet has not exceeded expectation, he has largely succeeded in adapting Sebastien Japrisot’s peculiar hybrid of black comedy, sweeping romance and war epic. Teamed once again with Amelie’s Audrey Tatou, A Very Long Engagement tells the story of Mathilde, a woman who refuses to believe her fiancé was killed during the war. Their brief romance is told in colourful flashback, his farcical war in stark, grey vermilisitude, her hope as a noir-ish escapade of dot-connecting as she tries to discover what happened to her one true love. An evangelical fatalist, Mathilde’s perseverance recalls Vidal’s Major in Williwaw.

Jeunet’s jaunty tone sets up the possibility of another romp, Amelie At War if you will, tempered with the irascible nature of Delicatessen’s surrealistic undertone. Like a gossipy best friend with great comic timing, his narrator binds the action that is speckled with delicious surrealism and absurdity. Jodie Foster makes a surprise appearance, a gem of melodramatic ballast that helps balance some of the incongruous goings on. Paradoxically, it’s here that the film shows its inability to gel. The uncertain mix of comedy and drama is as if Jeunet was straining at the producer’s ropes who yearn for something altogether more conventional than the work he’s celebrated for. A Very Long Engagement is a ravishing production buoyed by Mathilde’s fight for love, but one ultimately marred by an indecisive tone that robs the film of lasting greatness.

// COLIN FRASER