A Very Long Engagement (tbc)

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.

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