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A Very Long Engagement (5 out of 5)

Hotel Rwanda (4 1/2 out of 5)

There have been a number of excellent new releases that snuck under the Hollywood radar and won critical acclaim that unlike some box office blockbusters, was quite merited. Two in particular, are the French foreign film "A Very Long Engagement" with "Amelie" star Audrey Tatou, and "Hotel Rwanda" about the 100-day massacre and genocide of Tutsi and Hutu moderates by Hutu extremists in 1994.

In "A Very Long Engagement", the beautiful Tatou plays a young woman with polio whose fiance is one of five soldiers who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in WWI. Her stubborn refusal to accept his presumed fate leads her to a detective-style search for clues, against the wishes of those who care for her and don't want to see her get hurt. Shot in gorgeous chiaroscuros with breathtaking scenery, director Jean-Paul Jeunet (who also directed Tatou in "Amelie") succeeds in transcending the movie cliche of a love story with a wartime backdrop by exploring both romance and tragedy in vivd detail. Scenes of Tatou's country girl reminiscing over intimate moments shared with her boyish-faced lover juxtaposed with scenes depicting the brutalities of the war make the film richer by adding substance instead of mere window dressing. Buoyed by hope, Tatou's character has the viewer feeling her feelings, and the film's romantic undercurrent bubbles to the surface at the climactic end.

In "Hotel Rwanda", Don Cheadle hives a career-defining performance as the manager of a posh, Belgian-owned, five-star hotel who is forced to overcome his denial and face the fact that genocided is occurring outside the asylum of Hotel Collines in Kigali.

Director Terry George does an excellent job of bulding up fear; it is so palpable that it seems to radiate off the screen and overwhelm the viewer. In one scene in the movie, patrons and tourists are being evacuated as news reports state that the UN and the world powers are leaving Rwanda amidst failed negotiations. As the poor Rwandans (left to fend for themselves) look on in the rain, a bellboy holds an umbrella over the head of an embarrassed American journalist (played by Joaquin Phoenix), and upon noticing the triviality of the gesture, exclaims,"Oh...don't do that, please. Jesus Christ I'm so ashamed".

The performances given by Cheadle and his wife (played by Sophie Okonedo) are top notch, and the film is full of tense situations and confrontations that will make your heart pound out of your chest. It will also make the tears flow, emphasized by the fact that this real life tragedy could have and should have been avoided had the world shown a little more compassion instead of indifference.

Toronto Star movie critic Peter Howell put it best when he said, "the world largely ignored the killings, the media being more concerned at the time with such newsworthy events as the suicide of Kurt Cobain, the highway pursuit of O.J. Simpson and the inauguration of Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black President".

© 2004 Aaron Bayley