Blogical Conclusion

ALL’S UNFAIR IN LOVE AND WAR

FEB 14, 2009 – JEAN-PIERRE JEUNET’S A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT observes Mathilde’s (Audrey Tautou) quest to be reunited with her fiancé Manech (Gaspard Ulliel), who is believed to have died in war. It is only natural, therefore, that we expect Mathilde to be at the centre of the film’s beating heart, the forlorn femme around whom the director spins his romantic fancies. And for a while, that does appear to be the case. The first time Mathilde and Manech make love, he falls asleep, his hand on her breast. And this simple instance of physical contact is extrapolated and elevated to near-metaphysical resonance through the most exquisite of whimsies. “Each time his wound throbs, Manech feels Mathilde’s heart in his palm. Each beat brings her closer to him.”

But it’s the episode involving Elodie Gordes (Jodie Foster) that, unexpectedly, proves the most moving, the most heartbreaking, the most emblematic of wartime love. After a series of investigations, Mathilde believes Elodie can provide information regarding the whereabouts of Manech. She sets out to a Parisian marketplace in search of Elodie. Walking past a vendor who cups her palms around her mouth in order to amplify her yell of “Pilot fish,” Mathilde approaches a vegetable seller. “Excuse me, Elodie Gordes?” she asks. “Over there, selling carrots,” he replies. Mathilde walks over to Elodie and extends a photograph in her hand. “Never seen him,” says Elodie, stiffly, and walks away. But Mathilde is relentless. She catches up and demands, “Why did Bastoche and Biscuit argue? Was it over you?”

Elodie persists, “I have nothing to say!” Mathilde insists, “I want to know!” Elodie barks, “Leave me alone!” She moves away to another corner, and Mathilde follows her, breathlessly reciting a series of facts she hopes will change Elodie’s mind. “They last met at Bingo Crépuscule. My fiancé was also there. With Bastoche. In that shithole of a trench! I want to understand. I want to understand!” By now, Mathilde’s voice has reached a pitch that can no longer be ignored. Elodie stops in her tracks. She retraces her steps, back to Mathilde, and assures her, “It’s not what you think. I can’t talk about it. Give me your address. My spelling’s terrible but I’ll explain it all in a letter. I promise.”

And as promised, Elodie explains everything in a letter. “Miss, I beg you to keep my secret to yourself. When I met my husband, he already had four children. None were his. Out of kindness, he’d married a widow with TB. She was Polish, like me. He adopted her children before her death. I was also an unmarried mother. He then found himself the father of five, though he couldn’t have any of his own.” Mathilde’s reading of the letter is interrupted by an image of Elodie’s husband – Benjamin “Biscuit” Gordes (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) – pushing a cart crammed with five children squealing with delight. The cart comes to rest at Elodie’s feet. “You’re going to run me over,” she tells her husband, but it’s not a complaint. She’s smiling.

Mathilde continues to read. “We had four years of tenderness. We had plans. We dreamt of seeing the sea together. Then the war came. I thought Bastoche would take care of him… But during his leave, in September, 1915, just after the battle of Artois, I knew nothing would ever be the same.” Biscuit comes home and speaks of witnessing comrades whose cartridge belts exploded like fireworks. He speaks of using the body of a friend as a shield. He’s had enough. “If I desert, the gendarmes will come and get me. My only way out is to have a sixth child. If you have six children, they send you home.” And as he’s impotent, he tells Elodie, “It’s not betrayal if I’m asking you. Especially if it’s with Bastoche.”

She argues, “You’d have nine months to wait. The war will be over by then.” He sighs, “It will never be over. Never! There would be nine months of hope. Have you no heart?” And so she relents. One day, she finds a note from Kléber “Bastoche” Bouquet (Jérôme Kircher), asking her to tie a coloured cloth at the window if he wasn’t to come up. As the coloured cloth was being wrung in Elodie’s nervous hands, he sees no sign and he comes up. Elodie welcomes him. They chat nervously over coffee. Bastoche rises. He cannot go through with this charade. “Elodie, we’ll say we’ve done it. It’ll calm him down. It will make things easier for you, for me, for everybody.”

He turns to walk out of the door, when she does something unexpected. She lets her dress slip off her shoulders. Now in her undergarments – her face a mixture of confusion and hesitation, but her actions neither confused nor hesitant – she walks into her bedroom. He follows her and makes love to his best friend’s wife. The explicitness of the lovemaking leaves us in little doubt that, literally and figuratively, Bastoche has penetrated Elodie in ways her husband never could and never did. And that changes everything. Under the warmth of his sexual ardour, Elodie blossoms as never before. Soon, their little affair moves outdoors. At a café, he remarks, “Funny how your smile opens the parentheses.” He caresses the furrows in her cheek opened up by her widening lips. She replies, “I’ll close them as late as possible… In two days, at the train station.”

She smiles for her lover one last time at the train station. He leaves. And as Mathilde continues to read, Elodie reveals, “I didn’t even get pregnant! But soon, fear no longer tormented my husband. It was jealousy. “Where? When? Often? Which positions? Did you enjoy it?” It became a living hell for both of us. Now, Bastoche is dead, as you know, and my husband was killed in a hospital bombing.” The letter ends, and we think of poor Elodie Gordes. She finally found love, only to have it destroy her marriage. And eventually, she lost both lover and husband. Is it surprising, then, that Elodie was, at first, so reluctant to talk to Mathilde about her past? Why would she want to remember a time her life was filled with sunshine when all that surrounds her now is a wintry bleakness?

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