A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Sebastien Japrisot | 320 pages | 05 Jun 2003 | Vintage Publishing | 9780099449294 | English | London, United Kingdom A Very Long Engagement | But no one actually saw Manech die, and this fuels Mathilde's unrealistic belief that her lover somehow escaped. Meanwhile, as she continues her investigation, it appears that someone else is attempting something similar. Except, in this case, the witnesses aren't talking, they're dying. The film is comprised of three elements. The first is the romance, which, like in Cold Mountain , is never fully developed because the characters are kept apart for so much of the film. There are "fill in the blank" flashbacks that tell us how Manech and Mathilde met and show some of their more tender moments, but it's not really enough to build their relationship into a great passion. Had there been more intensity in the romance, the film's emotional impact would have been blistering. The film is constructed as a police procedural. We follow the investigation step-by-step, almost as we would in a mystery novel. Some clues turn out to be red herrings; others take us closer to unraveling the next layer of the complex onion of lies and cover-ups that conceal the truth. And, as in many mysteries, there are some rather improbable leaps of logic. This approach bogs down the film's pace in the early going, but proves to be an effective storytelling method once much of the early material has been dispensed with. Finally, there are the war scenes, which do not skimp on portraying the ugliness of World War I. In one shocking scene, we are treated to the image of a man covered in the guts of a comrade - and spitting some of them out of his mouth. There's plenty of death, and much of it is ugly. Scenes where characters' hands are blown off will have some viewers wincing or turning away. One of the hallmarks of Amelie was the fairy tale-like visual quality. She receives a pension and raises her two little daughters herself. Benjamin Gordes is one of the two corporals who escort the condemned prisoners. He is also known as Biscuit. He is a quiet and decent man, rather sad but well thought of by others. At the age of twenty, Gordes becomes a widower with four adopted children. He has adopted one more child by the time he marries Elodie. They quarrel over Gordes's wife Elodie. Gordes hates the war and takes to drinking. Elodie Gordes is Benjamin Gordes's wife. Before she married Gordes, she had a daughter by a man who quickly deserted her. Tina Lombardi is the companion of Common Law she calls him Nino , whom she has known since she was thirteen or fourteen. She had a difficult childhood. Her mother died while giving birth to her and her father was a drunkard. She became a prostitute. After the war, she searches for the truth of what happened to Nino. She hates all the military officers who had a part in his death, and she kills several of them. She is arrested, convicted, and executed. A large, thirty-year-old farmer from the Dordogne, he is a loner who keeps his troubles to himself. He is a good soldier and does what is necessary to survive. On one occasion, he strangles an officer in his company. He is patient, obstinate, and cunning. Mariette Notre-Dame is the twenty-year-old wife of That Man. When she hears that he has been killed, she sells their farm and moves away with her young son. She is seen in February when she rents a furnished room, but after that her whereabouts are a mystery. Veronique Passavant is the Eskimo's girlfriend. In spite of that incident, the love between them continues. Germain Pire is a private investigator hired by Mathilde to unlock the mystery of what happened to Manech. Aristide Pommier is a cook in Manech's regiment. He has known Manech since they were boys. Mathilde dislikes him. After the war, Pommier goes to live in Quebec and writes to Mathilde with some information about what happened to the five soldiers. He is known for his resourcefulness and determination in keeping his platoon supplied with food. He is extremely popular with his comrades. After the war, he serves as a corporal in the army of occupation across the Rhine, and then for a while he works at a garage. He loves his motorbike and does not like to stay in one place for too long. Eventually Mathilde makes contact with him and, during a long stay at her house, he tells her all that he knows about the events of the fateful weekend at Bingo. He is skeptical that the incident with the prisoners ever happened but he agrees to investigate. Lieutenant Jean-Baptiste Santani is the medical officer who treats the five condemned prisoners. He is killed two days later in an enemy bombardment. Louis Teyssier is a friend of the Eskimo and a former boxer. He owns a bar, where Mathilde visits him. He gives her information about Veronique, the Eskimo, and Gordes. Heidi Weiss is an Austrian woman whose brother was a German soldier killed at Bingo. She meets Mathilde and gives her information about what happened. The enduring nature of love is set against the destructiveness of war. It is clear her love was reciprocated. During the seven months Manech was at war, Mathilde received sixty-three letters and postcards from him. She has read these so often she could recite them all word for word. When Mathilde rediscovers Manech, although he does not recognize her because of his amnesia, his first words to her are exactly the same as those he spoke when they met as children: "You can't walk? So much has been destroyed and yet here is a hint the two young people can start again, almost as if nothing has changed. Love can survive, even under such awful circumstances. They must rebuild and get to know each other again, but they can still have a future together. Although the author chooses not to elaborate on how their renewed relationship develops, the reference to Mrs. Desrochelles as Mathilde's future mother-in-law makes it clear that Mathilde and Manech do eventually marry. The love theme can also be seen in the story of Tina and Nino Common Law , even though their story is much darker. It is like a reverse image of the idyllic love between the admirable Mathilde and Manech. Nino is a pimp and Tina a prostitute, but her love for him and her dedication to finding out the truth about what happened to him are no less than Mathilde's. It is implied that even though Tina and Nino led lives that most would regard as disreputable, the love they shared was no less valuable or intense than that of the other couple. There are all kinds of people and all kinds of love in the world, and it is love that is the antidote to war. The antiwar theme is brought out on all levels. The war is presented as barbaric, cruel, and senseless. Common Law, for example, gives thanks that he is not in the "first batch tossed into that meat grinder," an image that presents the soldiers as cattle being sent to the slaughterhouse. Daniel Esperanza, who was in the thick of the conflict, roundly condemns it and punctures any myths of the glory of war. He remarks on the photographs he possesses of soldiers showing "self-glorification for having captured a gun or an exhausted enemy soldier … self-satisfaction at the funeral of a fallen comrade. The barbarity of the sentences meted out to the prisoners is also condemned by many of the characters. Esperanza's commanding officer, as he passes on his orders to Esperanza, says that in his opinion, "a good half of the high command should be sent off to the nuthouse. There is an official cover-up of the incident. No officers are allowed to sign any papers relating to the affair, and they are told to just forget about what happened. The official version, that the men were killed in action, is just one example of what the narrator scathingly refers to as "the lies called History. When Mathilde visits the cemetery, she finds the grave of Six-Sous, who like the others died for no reason. The narrator comments on "the obscenity of a war that hadn't had one [a reason], aside from the egoism, hypocrisy, and vanity of a privileged few. As befits a mystery novel, the plot does not unfold in a linear way. It jumps forward and backward in time, as the events of the weekend in which the prisoners were pushed over the trenches is retraced through the reminiscences and letters of a range of characters. The point of view remains that of Mathilde, and she acts as the unifying element and the fulcrum for the entire narrative, since it is through interviews with her, or letters addressed to her, that the truth of what happened unfolds gradually. The voice of the narrator is also heard occasionally, usually to deplore the stupidity of the war. It evokes the idyllic world of France that the war disrupted. Through simple descriptions of nature, the novel also shows how some of that lost world can be recovered, as in the description of the site of the trench at Bingo, as it appeared several years after the war:.