CAT OF THE DAY 080: A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT

CAT OF THE DAY 080: UN LONG DIMANCHE DE FIANÇAILLES (aka A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT) (2004)

When your fiancé has gone off to fight in the trenches in the Great War, and you don’t know whether or not he’s alive, but you refuse to accept that he’s dead – what more could you ask for than a nice stripey ginger puss to keep you company?

You accuse Stripey Ginger Puss of having pyromaniac tendencies when he nearly sets fire to your bedroom by knocking a lamp over in the middle of the night.

But maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t Stripey Ginger Puss’s fault…

Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s follow-up to Amelie is a big-scale adaptation of Sébastien Japrisot’s novel set just after the Great War. Audrey Tautou is convinced that reports of her fiancé’s death on the Front have been greatly exaggerated, and scours France in a search for the truth.

Although sepia-tinted and sprinkled with whimsical humour, this portrait of war’s effect on a cross-section of French society is anything but cosy nostalgia, and you’ll need to stay alert if you want to keep tabs on the sprawling plot teeming with moustachioed French actors, plus a pre-Oscar Marion Cotillard looking hot, and Jodie Foster speaking French. It’s worth the effort, and a real pleasure to see digitally rendered views of Paris’s Les Halles and the Musée d’Orsay as they used to be.

Also, Stripey Ginger Puss.