HOWZAT

Although the promotion is gruelling, the film is not. There is humour, sometimes bordering on slapstick, and a fantastic cast

of character actors, many of whom appeared in Amélie. Jeunet's

cinematic style, between hyper-real and surreal, also distances the audience from the tougher scenes, as each shot is designed and often re-coloured, until it almost becomes a still life.

Back in the archives, Jeunet, 48, grinned down at us, watching the scene unfolding on a small screen. The old building, with its wrought-iron gantries and fake yellowing files filling the walls, became, under careful lighting, like a sepia print on his monitor. "There is an historical question about this film - all the images from the time are in black and white, but for commercial reasons we could not do that. The solution was making the shots a bit monochrome, and heightening certain colours digitally afterwards, so the scenes with Mathilde at home are mostly ochre and tobacco in tone, and those in the trenches pick up the blue-grey of the soldiers' uniforms."

Jeunet is never without an incredibly detailed storyboard - a cartoon-like rendering of each shot, and his trademark close-ups. He began his career in animation, before making his name with the black comedy with a touch of cannibalism, Delicatessen. Then came The City of Lost Children, and, incongruously, Alien Resurrection. Nothing is left to chance, he says later. "I love precise work, but

I rest open to changes if an actor proposes them, or the weather alters. But when Picasso made Guernica, he made 150 sketches..."

Tautou concurs: "You have to keep an eye on the tableau Jean-Pierre has created, stay in the right place, and suffer the close-ups. It's a very particular way of working."

Jeunet continues: "The greats - Fellini, Coppola, whoever - each have their own style, and I'm not saying I'm going to become great, but I do have this graphic style, this sense of rhythm in my work." Jeunet is smart and funny, with a bulldog-like determination, particularly on set. No detail is left untouched: every prop, every extra gets the once-over. He made all the actors read a First World War memoir, and

created a booklet from the time for all the extras. The costumes had to blend in with his scene colours, and 3km of blue-grey material was especially ordered for the hundreds of military uniforms.

Tautou's costumes were also carefully sepia-toned. "They were elegant, practical, and not about seduction." Today, however, Tautou is wearing rolled-up jeans, high-heeled purple sandals "from a

previous film, too", and a green boat-necked jumper that descends her delicious shoulders as the interview goes on. There is nothing blatantly sexy, nothing vulgar about her, but you can see from the heightened, nervous state of men around her that they find her compelling. Gaspard Ulliel, the 19-year-old actor who plays

her lover, Manech, says: "When you see Audrey, you just want

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