NO WOMAN'S LAND AUDREY TAUTOU AND JEAN-PIERRE JEUNET PONDER LOVE, LONGING AND WAR IN 'A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

In 2001, filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet and actress Audrey Tautou conquered the hearts of the world with ``Amelie.'' A whimsical tale about a Montmartre 

gamin who secretly improves other people's lives, the movie was that rare commodity that made both their countrymen and just about everybody else feel good about the French.

Now the duo is back with a much more ambitious, much less adorable new movie, ``A Very Long Engagement.'' Adapted from a sprawling novel by the late Sebastien Japrisot, it's a multicharacter mystery set during and soon after World War I.

Tautou plays Mathilde, a polio-surviving young woman living on the Brittany coast who refuses to believe that her lifelong lover Manech (Gaspard Ulliel) died, as reported, during the trench warfare. The film charts her dogged investigation, in which the stories of many other soldiers, their loved ones and their enemies are dramatized.

To say the least, it was a complicated assignment for both the pixieish actress and Jeunet, a former animator whose visually baroque works include ``Delicatessen,'' ``City of Lost Children'' (both co-directed with Marc Caro) and ``Alien Resurrection.''

``The most difficult thing about this complex story was to know, when I was shooting a scene, what my character knew at that moment,'' says the tres petite Tautou in unexpectedly deep-voiced, heavily accented English. ``Of course, it was not shot chronologically, and it's very dense - there were many, many details. It took us a lot of time to get rid of all the mistakes.

``In preparation, I came to the office every day for two months, hung out with all the technicians, worked on my script, talked with Jean-Pierre and all of the actors,'' the 26-year-old actress continues. ``And I found mistakes in the script that I helped them fix. For me, everything had to be perfectly clear about my part.''

``The book was worse,'' says Jeunet, 51 and slightly more comfortable than Tautou with English (both turned to translators when they had trouble expressing certain thoughts). ``The book was a nightmare to understand, every character had three or four names. But when we did the reading, Audrey indeed saw every detail that was a mistake, and we did a lot of corrections thanks to her.''

Still, keeping a half-dozen story lines, far-flung locations and multiple levels of understanding straight was a nightmare all the way through for the admitted control-freak filmmaker.

``Three weeks from the end of the shooting, I woke up at 4 in the morning and thought, 'Oh my God, there is a mistake,' '' Jeunet recalls. ``So I had to rewrite a scene and shoot a retake.''

This despite extensive, painstaking planning that included building a scale replica of the trenches and no-man's-land location on which every explosion, action and camera move could be mapped out. The setting was later constructed full-size by the French Army on one of its military preserves.

But the greatest piece of preparation was meeting Tautou, Jeunet says. Even before they made ``Amelie,'' he was convinced that she'd be the perfect Mathilde for the project he'd long dreamed of making.

``She is able to do everything - comedy, drama - and she can dance on the edge of the razor,'' the director says. ``Audrey doesn't want to cry, but she almost cries, and I prefer emotion with restraint. In 'Amelie,' she was very light, like a small girl. And she has a great sense of technique and timing that is very useful for me.

``And she is beautiful, but a little bit like an elf. She is perfect for me.''

Tautou has been expanding beyond her elfin image since ``Amelie'' made her a star. She played a romantic stalker in ``He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not,'' an illegal Turkish immigrant in the British ``Dirty Pretty Things,'' and a high-maintenance girlfriend in `'The Spanish Apartment.''

But getting back together with Jeunet was something of a relief.

``It made it easier because we didn't need to get to know each other,'' she says. ``We'd already gotten through the awkward stages and went straight to work, so I think we could go deeper. I was more confident, and I don't feel that way usually. I have certainty that Jean-Pierre trusts me and is not going to shout because I did something bad.''

Does anyone actually think that Tautou could do wrong? After ``Amelie's'' delirious reception, the actress literally became the poster girl for French charm.

But she did the best she could to nip that one in the bud.

``I never took that seriously,'' Tautou explains. ``Me, I'm just an actress. Maybe it's very selfish, maybe it's not very patriotic, but I do not want to be thought of as a symbol of France. That's not my job. They asked me to be in the wax museum, but I said no way!''

Tautou admits not even getting the ``Amelie'' fever when it spread across the world.

``I didn't realize at that time that it was such a phenomenon,'' she admits. ``I was inside of it, so I couldn't have the distance to look at it and appreciate the reaction. I hadn't done a lot of things before, so I thought that it was normal. People congratulated us, they were enjoying the movie, and I thought they were just being polite. It took me a lot of time to realize that something special had happened.''

Jeunet certainly understood that he was riding a remarkable tide of popularity at the time. But even though he had to be more willful about it than his leading lady, he tried not to let it go to his head, either.

``It was amazing,'' he acknowledges. ``But it's not important for me. I have my head on my shoulders and my feet on the ground, and I know it happens once in a lifetime. I was very lucky, and I knew that. And because of 'Amelie,' I got to make this one, which was very expensive. I have a credit for two or three movies because of 'Amelie.' ''

Maybe more. Despite some complaints about partial French government funding for the $55 million ``Long Engagement,'' the movie, a third of which was funded by Warner Bros., has done good box-office business in France over the last month.

``They are not angry, they are hypocrites because they do not want to share the cake,'' Jeunet says of French producers who have raised a stink about the financial situation. ``They just want Warner out of France. It's just a question of commercial competition. Everybody knows it is a French film, there is no doubt.

``This was a very good cooperation between the USA and France,'' Jeunet adds about the production. ``In fact, at this time, it's an important symbol of people from the two countries working together despite our differences. This French film is going to be shown everywhere in the world because of Warner Bros. And they gave me complete freedom, no pressure about the script or casting or the editing.''

As for further fruitful cooperation between himself and Tautou, Jeunet jokes that he's asked Tautou how well she understands the term ``trilogy.'' For her part, the actress is characteristically non-aggrandizing.

``He doesn't need me to make a great movie,'' Tautou says. ``If we have the opportunity to work together again, of course I will go. But I don't think we can restrict Jean-Pierre's work by my presence. He has many other things to do.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1) Audrey Tautou and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, posing at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, tout the complexity and precision of their new movie.

Ann Johansson/Associated Press

(2 -- cover -- color) Battling a reputaion

`Amelie' star Audrey Tautou shows a stronger side in `A Very Long Engagement'

(3) The battlefields of World War I were re-created in gritty, ominous detail for ``A Very Long Engagement.''

(4) Gaspard Ulliel is the French soldier gone missing, who is being sought by his heartbroken fiancee, in ``A Very Long Engagement.''