A Very Long Cheesefest

I watched A Very Long Engagement the other night. For those of you not in with the hip foreign films, this movie is basically Amelie part two - charming, whimsical French girl, fairy tale elements, plenty of mortified silence. I did enjoy the fantastic elements of the film - there was movie magic, which is all too rare these days.

But the dialogue! They can get away with cheesy lines about love and soulmates in French - barely- because it sounds nice. Bluh bluh bluh bluh je nou se qua. (I took Spanish if you couldn't tell). But even through the filter of language I found myself wincing at the corniness of the dialogue.

There were other problems with the movie (too many characters with confusing French names who all looked the same covered in mud in the trenches for starters) but the biggest problem was the dialogue. It was just too -- Hollywood. And French films, of all movies, are where we should be able to go to escape from Hollywood.