It's 1917 and as if the senseless slaughter of hundreds of thousands during the Somme nightmare wasn't enough, five French soldiers are sentenced to death for self-mutilation. But with their fate never officially recorded, Mathilde (the mesmerising Audrey Tautou) starts searching for her fiancé - the youngest of the condemned. While Jean-Pierre Jeunet's visually extraordinary WWI epic's playful script is often at odds with its weighty criticisms of cretinous French military generals, the whole film glows with a humanity all but absent from the trenches.
DVD Extras:
An army of lovingly composed extras make up the excellent two-disc set. Jeunet's solo commentary divulges little gems of trivia - how a visiting critic was given a role in the trenches and why the helmer angered Corsicans. But it's the 80-minute A Year At The Front Making Of that deserves the medals. Featuring everything from casting tapes to bicycle training, it's exhaustive without being exhausting.
