A Very Engaging Duo

Jean-Pierre Jeunet is the perfect personification of his films—sometimes rough, a little bit mad, but essentially human. The French filmmaker is quirky and eccentric, hair tousled, probably thinking of 20 new story ideas a minute. Audrey Tautou—made famous by her role in Jeunet’s most popular and arguably most breathtaking film, Amélie—is just as completely adorable and irreverent as the character that made her famous.

Together, they comprise the essence of the team behind A Very Long Engagement, Jeunet’s newest directorial effort and their second collaboration, the story of a young couple separated by war before love ultimately conquers all.

A seasoned veteran of filmmaking, Jeunet had been working on a film adaptation of Sebastien Jaspirot’s eponymous novel for 13 years before it became a reality. Engagement was the first time Jeunet had tackled a film that was not based on his own original screenplay, but had no qualms about attacking the project from all sides. “It’s nothing compared to when you’re writing an original story, but I brought my own ideas,” he said. “There was a lot of modification, of course.”

Once the script was set, the question of casting emerged. “When I met Audrey for Amélie, I thought, ‘Ah, this is it,’” he said. “If she had refused, I wouldn’t have made the film.” After having already worked together once, Jeunet and Tautou found it easier working on the set of Engagement.

“He knew me, of course, much better than at the beginning of Amélie. I knew he trusted me, and ... he knew I would do something he would like,” Tautou said.

Their steady rapport helped both prepare for the intensity of filming an epic movie like Engagement. Although the 22-week shoot was taxing and admittedly ambitious, it was not difficult, according to Jeunet—“I’m used to it.”

The hardest aspect of filming was not, in fact, the duration of the shoot, but rather the lengths both Jeunet and his actors had to go to make the film’s World War I environment believable. The director’s lifelong fascination with the war made him feel like it was his duty to bring a historically accurate portrayal to the big screen. “This is a real story,” Jeunet said. “We have maybe 10 movies about the first World War, and I wanted to show it and tell it.”

While Jeunet’s biggest hurdle was staying true to history, Tautou found it hardest to play a character as complicated and distraught as the young woman Mathilde. Tautou, who did not always want to be an actress, much less a veritable movie star, found her character’s “determination and courage” particularly admirable. “I like her pride. She’s very brave and very strong,” Tautou said. “Mathilde has the emotion. She’s full of tears, but these tears stayed inside ... [Her] state is a latent state. It’s a mood, a frame of mind, and it’s always hard to interpret and play a mood.”

Although Tautou did initially have some qualms about playing such an introverted woman, she embraced the challenge and the opportunity to reenter Jeunet’s universe. “I love his cinema,” she said. “It’s a very personal and unusual universe. He has his own elegance, his own aestheticism, his own way of transcending the everyday, average lives of his characters.”

It is these qualities that attracted Tautou to Jeunet a second time. And, while she says she will never reprise the role of Amélie, neither denied the possibility of working together a third time. “If I find another story for her, why not?” Jeunet said.

Whether it is another film with his muse Tautou, an American sci-fi movie like Alien: Resurrection (1997), or a surreal fantasy like The City of Lost Children (1995), Jean-Pierre Jeunet is, as always, ready to take on anything that comes his way, as long as he has a great team to back him up. “I am a little bit like a sailor,” he said. “Alone on the sea it’s very difficult to have to deal everyday, but you are always ready to go again.”