Tear Jerker / A Very Long Engagement

• Mathilde and Manech are separated when police officers come to pick Manech up and send him on the front. Through conscription, hundreds of thousands of young men like him ended up as no more than mere Cannon Fodder during World War I, as shown by the graphic battle flashbacks.
  • Every named soldier's story, even that of those who didn't die, is pretty tears-inducing.
• France lost a large portion of its adult male population during World War I, and thousands were left crippled and emotionally scarred, not to mention all the widows, orphans and broken fiancées. All of the characters Mathilde meets reflect aspects of this either by themselves or through what they say to her. She still keeps the hope of finding Manech through and through.
• Mathilde gives Ange Bassignano's musicbox locket to his hooker/mistress Tina Lombardi while she's in the Death Row for the murder of the officers who caused Ange's death. The locket contains a message, she reads it, and finds out Ange didn't want her to avenge him, telling her to try having a happy life and not wasting her life for him. Then she cries, realizing she wasted her life by going on that revengeful killing spree.
• It turns out Manech survived the war, but became amnesiac, with no memory left of his relationship with Mathilde. Though Mathilde still stays by him at the end, hoping to rebuild with him.

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