World War I · Film · 2004
A Very Long Engagement
Un long dimanche de fiançailles
Told her fiancé died after being thrown into no man's land as punishment, a stubborn young woman refuses to believe it and pieces together what really happened in one frozen trench on the Somme.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 2 places.
Stop 1: Bingo Crépuscule trench, the Somme
Key location
Five soldiers convicted of wounding themselves are pushed over the parapet into the snow of no man's land, among them Mathilde's fiancé Manech.
Stop 2: Paris
With a private detective and a stack of letters, Mathilde tracks down survivors, widows and a vengeful lover of one of the condemned men.
What really happened
Jeunet adapts Sébastien Japrisot's 1991 novel. Its five condemned men and the 'Bingo Crépuscule' trench are invented, but the punishment it describes has roots in reality: the French army treated self-inflicted wounds as desertion in the face of the enemy, and its courts-martial sentenced hundreds of soldiers to death, especially in the first years of the war.
The trench scenes take place in January 1917, in the brutally cold winter that followed the Battle of the Somme, where the French and British armies had suffered more than 600,000 casualties between July and November 1916. Mathilde's search after the war reflects the fate of hundreds of thousands of French soldiers listed as missing, whose families waited years for answers.
Where to watch
Checking streaming services…
Full details
- Original title
- Un long dimanche de fiançailles
- Directed by
- Jean-Pierre Jeunet
- Countries
- France, United States
- Languages
- French
- Released
- 2004
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Western Europe
- Themes
- Romance
- Combat
