Who's watched it? Let's see some hands, people!

Oh, and SPOILERS will be in this thread. Duh.

I finished it last night. I liked it a lot--it really hummed along, didn't it? Not sure how I feel about the ending, or the constant violence. But Audrey was quite good.

There was one scene where her acting seemed a little off--when, towards the end, her aunt cries and says she was wrong to not believe, Audrey just smiles. I felt she should have been a bit more comforting.

In fact, throughout the whole film she seemed a little... selfish. Like travelling all over France, placing ads, hiring investigators... It cost her aunt and uncle a lot of money, I'll bet.

Plus he had to replace his gravel. :p

Final thought of the OP: I need to go read that book.

Selfish? I wouldn't say selfish, I'd say in love. And it is mentioned at one point that she is spending her inheritance, not her parents' money. As for the investigator, remember, he was doing it for free. Or rather, in exchange for showing his daughter that polio neither renders one useless nor exempts them from love.

Ah, inheritance. That relieves some of that.

And the inspector was doing it cheap, not free. 20 somethings a day, with no expenses.

Oh, and love is entirely a selfish emotion.

Very arguable, that statement, but it'd be off-topic. So I'll make that a different thread, b/c I'm curious what others think on that.

I thought the movie was fantastic. One of the greatest moments was when whasser name gets the watch, opens it up to find the note and it says, "Don't ruin your life for me." Meanwhile, she's about to be executed for having done just that. I ate it up.

However, I really wanted a little note at the end that explained what happened. He recovered after a year and they got married, or he never recovered but she continued to nurse him, or realizing he'd never recover she took him in, but with the closure she had moved on and found somebody else. It felt like there was a little bit more story to tell at the end, and I didn't necessarily want to see it, I just wanted to know what it was.

My husband and I saw the film in theatres, and we loved it. Both for its extreme accuracy in showing the unique horror of WWI trench warfare and for the giddy uplifting feeling we got after leaving the theatre. We kissed each other and held each other closely because of a hugely glowing positive feeling after the film. I know, I know, it's a very, very strange combination of good points, but it worked extremely well.

We did have a bit of trouble following the plot, with all the major condemmed characters and different possibilites of their fates that kept playing out (drving home with from the theatre we had a spirited argument about which guys died how and if everybody's fate was finally revealed). That just made us want to see it again, though. Probably should have gotten around to it for this film club thread, but I didn't even notice it before.

It did feel a little too much like Amelie, but with the added feature of being an extremely graphic war film, I didn't have much of a problem with that. I wasn't a big fan of the funny sounding trench name, (Bingo Crepuscular?), but my husband convinced me that it went with the absurdity of war.

I loved the scene when everybody trooped through the field that had been the no-man's-land between the trenches. It was now thigh-high brush; a beautiful country field. (Of course, then came the only plot hole or inconsistancy which I noticed, which was with the lid on the old cellar that the boy had taken shelter in, but, hey, it wasn't a big plot hole.)

A Very Long Engagement was not just about the ability of love to survive, but also about the ability of a country to recover.

I did not have a problem with the violence throughout the film; I thought it was the done extremely well. People do die during war, frightful things happened, and they did happen in France in WWI. Making people aware of this is a good thing. History is important, and the general feel of the violence is history (I haven't a clue if a hospital in a derigable hanger exploded, but people certainly tried to get out of the trenches and people survived seeing best friends turn to mush beside them and no-man's land was a death sentence). And it wasn't a film lovingly focused on the horror of the violence; it was focused on the people living through, experiencing, and meting out the violence, and it was focused on how people survive.

Sure, Manech survived by losing all his memories and going back to the state of a young boy, but he did survive, and he was himself again, instead of a non-functioning shell. I LOVED that last scene, with Mathilede meeting Manech, and Manech asking the same question about whether her leg hurt that he had when they first met when they were both young.

I also liked the treatment of the deserters. The film argued for the humanity of letting those who had seen or done too much leave. Had this been a US film, I'd guess the fiancée would have disappeared leading a charge or something. We couldn't have one of our heroes try for a discharge via a self inflicted wound.

Grrrrr... I wanna see this movie again, but the video guy here won't bring it in because it's foreign and no one would rent it and he'd end up losing money. Stupid small towns...

I'm very glad I caught to one time showing of it in the city (film festival). The theatre was packed and there was a big applause after it was finished.

I enjoyed every aspect of the film. The acting, the story, the beautiful photography and gritty realism. Only complaint would have to be that the plot's pretty hard to follow at first, with all these French names and introductions getting thrown around.

A lot of the movie's faded from my mind, I really want to see it again. I DO remember Jodie Foster though. It's one of those "Is that who I think it is?" moments.

Really felt bad for the carpenter at the start though. Poor guy.