One Shell Too Many – A very Long Engagement

In 1919, Mathilde was 19 years old. Two years earlier, her fiancé Manech left for the front at the Somme. Like millions of others he was “killed on the field of battle.” It’s written in black and white on the official notice. But Mathilde refuses to believe it. If Manech had died, she would know. She hangs on to her intuition as tightly as she would onto the last thread of hope linking her to her lover. A former sergeant tells her in vain that Manech died in the no man’s land of a trench named Bingo Crepescule, in the company of four other men condemned to die for self-inflicted wounds. Her path ahead is full of obstacles but Mathilde is not frightened. Anything is possible to someone who is willing to challenge fate…

Mathilde (Audrey Tautou) is told that her fiancé (Gaspard Ulliel) has been killed in World War I. She refuses to believe this, however, and begins trying to find out what actually happened on the battlefield the night he was supposedly killed, enlisting the help of a private investigator. During her search, she stumbles across evidence of the inhumane and morally bankrupt system used by the French to deal with deserters, and hears from other men who were sentenced to extreme punishment.

Tells the story of a young woman’s relentless search for her fiancé, who has disappeared from the trenches of the Somme during World War One.

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