After the huge success of Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (or ‘Amélie’), which seemed the perfect marriage between director Jean-Pierre Jeunet and his star Audrey Tautou, expectations were high for their next collaboration. Again, the typical style that Jeunet showed in Amélie is strongly present and Tautou seems to be in perfect place again. I liked Amélie a lot: I thought it was really original, and it’s safe to say that Jeunet pulled it off again with his latest feature. Nevertheless, this movie left me with a very ambiguous feeling.

There is no denying Jeunet’s craftsmanship: his cinematography is absolutely stunning, the use of colours (although sometimes too prevalent) is beautiful, the camera work and editing is outstanding and original and the world he creates through his colourful characters and dreamlike surroundings is often mesmerising. It’s no wonder millions of people worldwide were seduced by the world Jeunet created with Amélie. These people will not be disappointed, since most of those elements are present here. The atmosphere is less light-hearted this time, as part the story takes place in the trenches during World War I, a particular gruesome war. Jeunet avoids the real horror by showing the fighting in a very detached and clinical way, devoid of all emotion. While these images give a cold, non-political statement, the emotion is explored in the civilian side of the story in which Tautou is searching for her lost fiancée who is presumed dead.

As far as the story goes: it is very complex and I didn’t like the way it was told. In my opinion, Jeunet made too much use of the narrative voice-over. I understand Jeunet stayed very true to the book and I have no problem with voice-overs, however in this case there was too much story told and not enough story acted out. A voice-over should be supportive to the images and role-play, but here it seemed the other way around. I had the feeling the whole book was being read to me and the images were just there to emphasise and colour in the narration. Therefore, I had the impression watching an animated comic book, where most of the fragmented scenes consisted of fast-cut skits to accompany the words. I thought it to be either a lazy way of storytelling or a desperate way to put too much story in too little a space. He should have been much sparser with the voice-over and have more storytelling in the acting.

But there is more. Not only was it too bloody much information, but it was also at too fast a pace. Although my French is quite good, I found watching this without subtitles a very tiring experience. Also native French speakers think it’s too fast and too much. This movie is overly dialogue-driven. So besides the ongoing voice-over we also have the characters constantly spewing all this detailed information which is not always vital to the story. Jeunet likes to elaborately describe all the characters in the movie (even if their importance is very small) which is just too much useless information. The viewer knows nothing more than Tautou’s character, Mathilde, and is therefore obligated to follow this elaborate path of facts and figures. That’s a pity, because it diverts the attention from the real story and turns the intricate plot into the main subject of the movie, leaving the characters and their emotional development out of the equation. It is like watching an architect build a beautiful building, methodically, brick by brick until it is completed, without really showing the beauty of the building, it’s meaning or the aesthetic of the design.

People who have seen Amélie will spot many similarities with this movie and you cannot help but make comparisons between the two. Besides the voice-over and unique visual style, there is again Tautou’s quirky, dreamy character who displays a strong determination to follow her heart. We also see the colourful characters who add the extra flavour and pull the story slightly out of our world, as if it were an alternate reality of our own universe. Since these characters had more recurring roles in Amélie, it was easier to develop a liking to them. In this movie, their performances are just too brief and too numerous, and therefore it becomes a bit annoying. Tautou’s performance is rather similar to the one in Amélie, but she gets pushed away by the intricate plot. What is left is an impressive feat of storytelling and mise-en-scene and many people will fall for what is (again) essentially a simple love story. Nevertheless, it would’ve been better if it concentrated more on the characters and less on the plot.