Audrey Tautou
Mathilde
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- Tells the story of a young woman's relentless search for her fiancé, who has disappeared from the trenches of the Somme during World War One. Five desperate French soldiers during The Battle of the Somme shoot themselves, either by accident or with purpose, in order to be invalided back home.
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A Very Long Engagement is a 1991 romantic war novel by French author and screenwriter Sébastien Japrisot. Set in France during World War I, it follows Mathilde Donnay, who doubts the veracity of a report that her fiancé, Manech, has been killed in combat.
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Tells the story of a young woman's relentless search for her fiancé, who has disappeared from the trenches of the Somme during World War One. Five desperate French soldiers during The Battle of the Somme shoot themselves, either by accident or with purpose, in order to be invalided back home.
Complete summary of Sebastien Japrisot's A Very Long Engagement. eNotes plot summaries cover all the significant action of A Very Long Engagement.
- Introduction
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Characters
- Themes
- Topics For Further Study
- Style
- Historical Context
- Compare & Contrast
- Critical Overview
Sébastien Japrisot's novel A Very Long Engagement was first published in France in 1991 and was translated into English and published in New York in 1994. Set in France during and after World War I, the plot revolves around the fate of five French soldiers who have been sentenced to death for shooting themselves in the hand to avoid military servic...
Jean Baptiste Rossi was born in 1931, in Marseille, France. Under the pseudonym Sébastien Japrisot, he is a mystery writer, film director, screenwriter, and translator. He lives in France. Japrisot wrote and published his first novel in 1950, when he was eighteen years old. His first novel translated into English was The 10:30 from Marseilles (1963...
Saturday Evening
A Very Long Engagement begins in January 1917, during World War I. Five French soldiers are being marched to the battlefront on the Somme. They are prisoners, having been condemned to death for shooting themselves in the hand to avoid military service. Their names are Kléber Bouquet (Eskimo), Francis Gaignard (Six-Sous), Benoît Notre-Dame (That Man), Ange Bassignano (Common Law or Nino), and Jean Etchervery (Manech, also known as Cornflower).
Bingo Crépuscule
In August 1919, Manech's fiancée Mathilde visits Daniel Esperanza, a former army sergeant who is dying in a hospital. He tells Mathilde everything he knows about what happened to the condemned men. He was in charge of escorting them to the frontline trench called Bingo Crépuscule. His orders were that the men were to be thrown over the trench, with their hands tied, into the no-man's-land between the French and German trenches. He arranged for the condemned men to send letters to their loved...
The White Widow
The wheelchair-bound Mathilde studies the information that Esperanza left her. She reads the copies he made of the men's letters and also reads a letter from Captain Favourier to Esperanza dated Sunday, January 7, which says the five men are still alive and he hopes to receive an order to bring them back at nightfall. Mathilde tries to piece the puzzle together. From Aristide Pommier she gleans some information about Manech as he was awaiting trial. She sees Esperanza again and suspects he is...
Ange Bassignano
Ange Bassignano, also known as Common Law, is one of the five condemned French prisoners. He is twenty-six years old and handsome, but not of good character. He is regarded as sly, deceitful, and quarrelsome, and he has no occupation other than as a pimp. However, his girlfriend, the prostitute Tina Lombardi, is devoted to him. He was serving a five-year sentence for assault when he was plucked from prison and made to join the army. He is in the army for three months before he is condemned to...
Bénédicte
Bénédicte is the wife of Sylvain. She helps to take care of Mathilde.
Biscuit
SeeBenjamin Gordes
Love
The enduring nature of love is set against the destructiveness of war. Mathilde is so devoted to her fiancé that she tirelessly works to discover his fate and clings to the belief he is still alive. 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 a...
Antiwar
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...
Investigate the causes of World War I. What was the immediate cause and what were the main underlying causes?Research the history of the use of poison gas in warfare, from World War I to the present. When was the use of poison gas banned internationally?Research the role of the United States in World War I. Why and when did the United Statesenter the war? What were the main battles fought by American troops?Were the men in the novel who shot themselves in the hand cowards, or were they justified in their desire to escape the conflict? Is a soldier always, without exception, obliged to follow the order...Nonlinear Narration and Poetic Style
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 unfold...
World War I
World War I was one of the most devastating wars in human history. The number of casualties was huge. In the battle of Verdun, for example, which began in February 1916 and lasted for five months, the French suffered 350,000 fatalities as they repelled the German assault on a strategically important fort. The Germans had 300,000 fatalities. In the battle of the Somme, which began in July 1916, the British army suffered over 57,418 casualties, one-third of who were killed on the first day alon...
Trench Warfare
The battles of Verdun and Somme in 1916 were examples of trench warfare. The first trenches on what became known as the Western Front were built by the Germans in September 1914, only one month after the war began. The trenches were built so that the Germans could halt the advance of the British and French. The Allies, seeing they could not break through the German trenches, dug trenches of their own. Because the Germans had built the first trenches, they were able to choose the most advantag...
1914–1918: Trench warfare is largely immobile. It involves large armies fighting for months to make very small territorial gains. Today:Trench warfare is a thing of the past, as are conventional wa...1914–1918: Britain and France are bitter enemies of Germany. Today: Britain, France, and Germany are allies and members of the European Community.1914–1918: Poison gas is used by all sides in the conflict. An estimated 91,198 soldiers die as a result of poison-gas attacks and another 1.2 million are hospitalized. The Russian Army, with 56,00...Reviews of A Very Long Engagement applaud Japrisot's skill in creating an intriguing mystery and the many ways in which he evokes the devastation caused by World War I. A Publishers Weeklycritic praises Japrisot's "eloquently easy, almost offhand style," and comments that his "re-creation of the nobility, futility and horror of trench warfare is ha...
Aug 7, 2014 · The decidedly non-linear plot centers upon the young love of Mathilde and Manech (Gaspard Ulliel), two Breton youths, whose engagement is interrupted by the outbreak of World War I and Manech’s subsequent death sentence for self-mutilation.
A Very Long Engagement Summary & Study Guide includes detailed chapter summaries and analysis, quotes, character descriptions, themes, and more.
It is a fictional tale about a young woman's desperate search for her fiancé who might have been killed during World War I. It was based on the 1991 novel of the same name by Sébastien Japrisot. The film was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography at the 77th Academy Awards.
