(A Very Long Engagement)
Here are my views: At 2 hours and 14 minutes, I once again found the movie too long. I was restless in my seat and would have looked at the time on my cell phone several times, except that I had loaned it to my daughter, Tara.
My main problem with the movie centered around the many parts I found preposterous vis-a-vis the real world. In fiction, we're supposed suspend our of disbelief. At some level, we realize the story is not true, but the author/director could have given us more assistance in that regard. It wouldn't have taken that many adjustments to the script.
I found myself three or four times being pulled out of the story, only to think, What a crock of b.s. that is!
If something happens in a story that has one-in-a-million odds against it, okay. I can usually take that once, perhaps even twice, but not over and over again. This, folks, is why we're not talking about the A range for this movie, even though it had a lot of to be said for it.
As a former architecture major in college and a lover of nature, I found the French, mostly rural settings--aside from the battle scenes--breathtaking, exquisite, captivating, beckoning . . . I'm having a hard time finding enough superlatives, but you [don't] get the picture (gotcha), unless you see it. The settings were stunning and mesmerizing--one gorgeous French postcard scene right after another!
I agree with Terri that there was a romantic (my word) sweetness about the movie that drew us into it. You just wanted to hug the heroine, who was so appealingly portrayed.
As a poet, I enjoyed the symmetry of the many "what goes around comes around" [whether it be love or cruelty] loops that were portrayed. There were also many cleverly staged scenes that had to do with the devices of the early 20th Century, the gadgets of the time (World War I era).
I didn't mind that it was in French with English subtitles. That only added to its charm for me.
Now we come back to the spoiler. I don't insist on absolute realism in stories, but I wasn't sufficiently drawn into this movie to overlook its incredibility in spots. In fact, they ripped me out of the story several times before I could finish my first box of popcorn.
Since this is a fundamental error in my view, I'm going to side with the critics and call this movie a B, no plus, no minus, just a B. Too bad; it had the stuff that greatness could be made of.
PS: Many of the battle and war scenes are brutal to the point of being grotesque and could/should have been cut to improve the movie. Eliminate about half an hour of them (leave a few), straighten out the storyline and this could have been one hell of a movie! Many scenes are so unpleasant that you may want to close your eyes and/or look the other way for around 30 minutes. I don't view myself as squeamish. (E.g., I had no problems with Saving Private Ryan), but these were much worse in my opinion--in part because many of them seemed gratuitous, i.e., not necessary to advance the plot or develop the characters. Their constant barrage took away from an otherwise sweet and compelling experience.
She said that it was sweet and picturesque.
"It was much, much better than Amelie," she commented, which was the movie that made Audrey Tautou (about to co-star with Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code) famous.
We walked out of Amelie, which she described as "a French surreal movie, written and directed for an audience on acid."
Terri didn't like the ending of Un Long Dimanche de Friancailles. She didn't find it satisfying, whereas I found it poetic.
