My grandmother would really like this

A Very Long Engagement

At some point in the history of things, certain stereotypes became so pervasive that they turned into facts. Women crave romance is one of these facts. Men, in the collective consciousness, can take it or leave it, mostly in hot 5 minute intervals. Women, though, need it. At least, that's what my mom tells me.

It's a pretty good rule of thumb, but I'd like to add a little something to it. Women, as a function of how satisfied they are with their lives, often also take their romance with a dollop of gut-wrenching tragedy. I'll simplify that: the extent to which your mom feels underutilized and underappreciated equals the extent to which she craves her romance novels to end in a murder-suicide.

It should be said that I'm not a woman, but I've had time to study two such subjects very carefully. My mother and grandmother. I've spent far more time with them than with any two humans on this earth [insert emasculation jab here, you earned it]. My mother has always seemed incredibly happy with her life. She has a fulfilling job, a warm home, a doting husband, two offspring that haven't embarrassed her lately and a small dog she treats like a human infant. She buys it clothing and gave it our last name.

She likes her romance cheery and light with splashes of open-mouth-kissing. Ideally, difficulties, white lies and misunderstandings neatly wrap themselves up with an apology by the love interest ["I didn't know she was your sister"] in under 90 minutes. The strong young lady forgives all, eager to move on and start a strong young life with the clumsy dolt she loves despite herself. Curtain. The credits roll against a wedding montage. Faces streaked with cake. Grandfathers dancing with flower girls. Often, Adam Sandler or Jennifer Lopez is involved. Mother calls these things "chick flicks".

My Grandmother, though, takes her romance a little darker. When I was young, this meant I had to turn Nickelodeon off so she could watch the dumb and likeable heroines of soap operas die horrible deaths at the hands of their twin sisters, separated at birth, disfigured by acid, taken out by the tide, left for dead, back for revenge. She'd comment on the tragedy with a devious glint in her eye. She now forgoes the romance altogether and just listens to the police scanner she got for Christmas. Grandmother calls these things "my programs".

I don't know why Mom likes to bask in people's happiness while Grandma likes to see that same joy shredded like an animal carcass. It could be that in the late 50's an unplanned night of hormonal surges, a culture of inadequate sex education and endless rounds of couples skate at Pattison's Rollercade left her a housewife instead of a high-powered trial lawyer. That's my hunch, I can't confirm it.

Fact is, though: grandma likes to see people suffer, and if she didn't hate the French so much, I'd have her watch A Very Long Engagement.

It's a two and a half hour gauntlet of human suffering, incorporating all the plot elements popularized in soap operas: mistaken identity, self-mutilation, botched executions, amnesia, everything. Audrey Tautou plays Mathilde, who lost her fiancé in World War I but was never able to let him go. Manech shot himself to avoid rejoining the front lines and was supposedly court-martialed and sentenced to death. Rather than face the firing squad, his superiors order him thrown out into the no-man's-land between the French and German trenches, where starvation would take him if stray bullets did not. This reality is doubly difficult for Mathilde. Not only is her fiancé considered a coward and a traitor, but she has no body and no grave, nowhere to morn him. More importantly, though, she has no proof he's even dead.

A Very Long Engagement is Mathilde's journey to retrace Manech's steps, with all the flashbacks and battlefield reenactments that entails. It's brutal, and she seems kind of crazy, or at least simple. No way could Manech have survived. We've heard the tales, seen the footage, the piles of bodies, the hip deep death. Despite it all, and because of love, Mathilde perseveres. Or something.

Eventually, finally--mercifully--Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet [Amelie, City of Lost Children] coaxes an ending that is both happy and sad while being neither sappy nor bittersweet. It is what it is, for better or worse. Like life.

For that reason I'd also suggest my mom watch A Very Long Engagement, because at the very least it's better than Monster-In-Law and 50 First Dates. And there are moments of real and devastating emotion.

Best of all, it's so tragic that Grandma might not notice that it's also sentimental. Conversely, it's so mushy that Mom might not mind how disturbing it is. Movies are what we make of them, and Jeunet's brilliance is that he allows us to make his movies into whatever we want them to be.

So play nice you two, watch your movie.

Then, if Grandma wants another two plus hours of impotent weeping and anguish--this time with no hope of redemption--I'll tell her to go watch Revenge of the Sith with someone who doesn't own a Storm Trooper uniform.