Angel Movie
Storyline
TAGLINES
A dreary city tenement provides backdrop to this tale of exclusion and the magic it takes to become accepted.
Based on the book by Elizabeth Taylor, "Angel", this is the story of a young woman with incredible imagination who refuses to accept the world around her, and creates her own realities.
| Romola Garai | Angel |
| Charlotte Rampling | Hermione |
| Lucy Russell | Nora Howe-Nevinson |
| Michael Fassbender | Esmé |
| Sam Neill | Théo |
| Jacqueline Tong | The mother |
| Janine Duvitski | Aunt Lottie |
| Christopher Benjamin | Lord Norley |
| Jemma Powell | Angelica |
| Simon Woods | Young journalist |
| Alison Pargeter | Edwina |
| Seymour Matthews | Doctor |
| Tom Georgeson | Marvell |
| Una Stubbs | Teacher |
| Rosanna Lavelle | Lady Irania |
| François Ozon |
5.70 out of 10 (140 votes)
Visitor Reviews
Unsympathetic characters ruin an otherwise well-made movie
posted on 19 Jul 2009I know this is a movie based on a romance novel, so I wasn't really expecting much. I imported it because I'm a huge fan of Michael Fassbender and figured there's at least eye candy. That said, I don't think I've ever seen a female lead character as unsympathetic as Angel. It's not Romola Garai's fault. In fact, I have no doubt she played the part perfectly. The problem is that the part is written to be so selfish, stubborn, contrive and all-in-all annoying that I can't imagine anyone putting up with her at all. Sure, it's a movie; but there is suspension of disbelief, and there's just plain unbelievable, like the character interactions in this movie. The production values are great. I really liked the vivid colors, the contrasts and the whimsical travel sequences. But whenever the movie stays on Angel for any prolong period of time, I find myself wanting to smack her silly and wondering if I can stand watching more of her. If only they'd re-tuned the script to make her a little less abrasive. That's probably against the director's intention for the movie, but I think it would definitely have made it more enjoyable.
Ozon seems to have missed the point
posted on 03 Jul 2009What a disappointment. It's hard to know what attracted Ozon to Elizabeth Taylor's fantastic source novel as his adaptation is misjudged on a number of levels. Although he slavishly sticks to Taylor's plot, Ozon has real problems with - or chooses to ignore - the very things that are at the heart of the novel. Taylor's ironic, often cruel wit is missing. Characters are softened in the way one would expect of Hollywood, but not of French cinema. He doesn't seem able to master Taylor's irony at all - the audience at last night's London Film Festival screening were very confused about where and when they should laugh. It was impossible to know what the director felt about the characters. Almost entirely missing was Taylor's exceptional portrait of class - one of the major themes of the novel. The film felt like a classic Europudding - rootless in an implausible world. There was very little sense of being in Edwardian Britain.The film is overwrought and out of control. If I hadn't already read the novel, I would have been completely puzzled by what I was watching and how I was supposed to respond or feel.
Everything about it had me cringing in my seat..
posted on 14 Apr 2009I had absolutely no expectations whatsoever about this movie, but I knew it was going to be a bumpy ride just as soon as I saw the name Elizabeth Taylor on screen AND what a bumpy ride it was.. how was I to know?? Never once did I feel anything for the main character who has ironically been given the name 'Angel'. The actress playing the selfish little brat didn't captivate my attention at all. The only thing interesting about her were maybe her piercing blue eyes. But they weren't enough to get me through this more-than-2-hour-long over the top movie. Everything about it had me cringing in my seat: the god awful music, the fake decors, the crazy outfits. I know it's typical for director Ozon to (shock and) awe his audience with his 'kitschy' style, but when the entire audience starts to laugh as the main character is laying on her death bed screaming her own name just before she goes, that's not a very good sign.
A sumptuous, deliberately melodramatic and yet genuinely heartfelt pastiche.
posted on 11 Feb 2009Francois Ozon has always veered between two very distinct styles; the more realistic, almost gritty visual style found in films such as Under the Sand and Criminal Lovers, and the highly stylised camp of Sitcom and 8 Women.Angel definitely falls into the latter category, with its candy coloured visuals and big dramatic plot twists and character nuances harking back to the feel of Hollywood pictures from the 40s, like Gone With The Wind.Everything is designed to imitate this era of film-making from the score, the heavily melodramatic "rags-to-riches" storyline, to even the use of rear projection during the travelling scenes. These are all implemented to increase the unreality and fantasy of the film and give it that "classic movie" feel.At first I found the actual story and characters almost second fiddle to the look and sound of the film, but Ozon isn't out to parody, more to homage or pastiche. Angel's sudden and cartoony rise to being a prominent literary figure is silly and fun, but towards the end as her vision of fantasy starts clashing with reality, the film turns out to be unexpectedly moving.Angel is far from being a heavily moralising tale about true love and happiness over gaudy extreme and is more a joyous celebration of fantasy over reality, a wonderful pastiche of historical romance where the girl manages to win the grumpy gloomy bachelor and runs after him in the rain as they kiss passionately under a shining rainbow as the score swirls in that classic forties way you never hear anymore.It's a wonderful and funny and frivolous film and yet also tragic and moving at times. With this much love and joy up on screen it's such a shame some people seem to miss the point of it and criticise the "bad special effects" and "bad acting". Instead you should simply enjoy the deliberate unreality of the visuals, music and plot of this brilliant, sumptuous movie.
Hell's Angel
posted on 10 Jan 2009For me, this film is truly awful. It tells the story of an English woman who writes simplistic, kitschy, romantic novels - think Barbara Cartland, but set in the 1900s. Its prolific, eponymous heroine, the daughter of a provincial grocer, has her first book published while still at school; and goes on to achieve fame and fortune, before meeting her inevitable nemesis.Had the film contained irony, humour, imaginative visuals, original character insights or surprising plot twists, it could have been watchable, perhaps even admirable. But Francois Ozon, the writer/director, has used little or none of these; and instead has employed the sort of fairy-story, linear plot line, cardboard characters, melodramatic action and over-decorated interiors as one imagines appear in Angel's books. (Fortunately, we are given little by way of examples of her writing.) Incidentally, though on a technical level the film is mostly competent, there is a laughably bad piece of back-projection - or whatever equivalent is used these days - near the beginning, when Angel is in a carriage riding through London.Even with these defects, the film might still have worked if Ozon had made his main character in the slightest degree likable or intriguing; had she been, say, a naive dreamer, who relates guilelessly to those around her and to her adulatory readership. We could then have understood and forgiven her ignorance of the absurdity of her writing. But it is hard for us to sympathise with Angel when she starts off as a hateful, materialistic, selfish brat; remains so throughout her period of success and lionisation; and hardly changes even when fate turns against her.It would be easy to blame some of the film's flaws on over-acting by its principal, Romola Garai, but I suspect she plays her part exactly as Ozon wanted. The male lead is Michael Fassbender as Esmé, a stereotypical, garret-dwelling, Bohemian artist, who is the one object of Angel's adoration (besides herself). Also on stage are Lucy Russell as Nora, Esmé's sister, who genuinely admires and loves Angel; Sam Neill as Angel's publisher, who incredibly agrees to print her first schoolgirl effort despite her refusal to alter even one word of it; and Charlotte Rampling as his wife who is understandably baffled by his abandonment of his critical faculty.Unless you're really stuck for something to do, I recommend giving Angel a miss. Instead, for those who haven't seen it, the recent Miss Potter is a far more credible and engaging portrait of a turn of the century female writer.
Unrelenting drivel
posted on 29 Nov 2008Well, easily the worst film I've seen this year, but then I suppose it's only March. Not at all sure what they were trying to do with this - given that it's the story of a Barbara Cartland style writer of romantic novels, perhaps they felt compelled to address it in the same overly melodramatic style. Frankly for about two hours I was fairly convinced that it must have been a dream sequence. I can't fault the performances, but the script was just so pedestrian they didn't have anywhere to go. The main character is imaginative to the extent that it actually becomes difficult to determine what she really believes, when she is consciously imagining and when she is simply deluded. It's never really resolved what the male lead's true feelings for her are, and the other characters are merely one-dimensional support.Eminently missable.
Avoid at all costs
posted on 17 Nov 2008Spoiler from start, because its the crux of why this film is so dire. it starts off as a dickensian/bronte type story, which I was quite in the mood for, and it begins much like "Miss Potter" (go and watch instead of this) but instantly you will take a dislike to the main character who seems to be a spoiled brat and very well played by Romola Garai (lets make it clear the acting was good I can't fault the entire cast) who is a young undiscovered writer but prone to flights of fantasy she envisions herself being a world famous writer however nobody thinks she has it in her. her first book gets a publishing letter and her publisher (sam niel) points out the glaring mistakes in her writing because she is young an inexperianced eg. she wrote that champaign would be opened using a corkscrew. however he like her innocent style and sure enough she became the JKRowling of her day. sure enough one by one and without fail all her dreams come true, and in a very childlike way, so you begin to think that the whole film is not really happening, but is one of her flights of fantasy, especially with scenes of London as she coaches by being filmed like a 1950's musical or austin powers parody. you expect the film to come back to reality, that would explain the childish, pathetic storyline...it literally has EVERY Cliché EVER one by one, just like a nursery rhyme princess...but no, this really is the film, how in the name of god someone commisioned this twaddle, how in the name of god SAM NEIL read this script and agreed to put his name to it I will never know. I would be disappointed if this was my 8 year olds school play. please please do not watch this film.
yes, it's a melodrama. but look!
posted on 16 Oct 2008first, go read some rags-to-riches 'women's fiction' sagas of the type popular in the 60s and 70s (it's better if you've read them in childhood, when it's possible to take them with the utter seriousness with which they take themselves, but not everyone has that advantage). then go watch some sirk & minnelli & some of howard keel's fine 50s musicals. then go read some reviews for the source novel to see what elizabeth taylor was actually on about (clue: it's an affectionate take on populist romances, with a fair leavening of satire). *then* watch the film.one of the great joys of 'Angel' is watching the way ozon conveys all this by the dynamics between the characters and their respective acting styles. and also by the costumes. oh, the fabulous costumes. is that a pheasant on angel's head at the end there? on second thoughts, it's probably a peacock.
Almost totally without merit
posted on 02 Oct 2008I must be a masochist. Ozon's work is tiresome, at best, yet, since he is clearly technically able, I keep saying 'maybe this time...' But no. This time is worse than all of the rest. This time is embarrassing kitsch. Poor Romola Garai - a wonderful actress. Here she is persuaded to over-act with such crass stupidity that she is almost unrecognisable from her stunning performance in 'Atonement'. OTT has its place in cinema, but it is a place that needs a context. Here there is no context, just tastelessness piled upon tastelessness.The characters do not engage. The relationships do not engage. The style is flowery enough to make the Chelsea Flower Show look drab - but to what effect? None. Style is nothing if it is not pointed in the direction or theme. (And theme is nothing if it is not arrived at through style.) The script of this may have looked fine, but once on the floor, Ozon killed it stone dead. By the end, I would not have been surprised if the director had entered screen left tap dancing and singing 'I'm gay, I'm gay, I'm gay.' (Lest it be thought I am homophobic - Pedro Almodovar is Europe's greatest director by a long way, in my estimation.) The sad thing is that, while other much much greater directors are unable to find the funds necessary to make great films, some idiots are willing to pour millions into this rubbish.Save one... there is one moment in the film which is beautiful - but it is borrowed from someone else. The moment when Angel encounters her husband's child is truly affecting - but it is too close for comfort to the moment in 'Once Upon A Time in America' when Noodles encounters Max' son.This film is absolute drivel.
A true masterpiece!
posted on 30 Sep 2008This is probably the best film I have seen this year. Everything is perfectly done in this movie. First, you will notice that the photography is perfect and beautiful, and I seriously advise you to watch this movie on theater if you want to take advantage of all its qualities from the image to the soundtrack. Secondly, the actors are perfect and they all play with a lot of subtlety their part. Absolutely no one is ever a caricature of his character, and no one ever tries to be nicer than his character is supposed to be. Everybody will notice that every character is important, and that with a minimum of time and sequences, you will guess who each one of them is, and what he thinks, and so on. This film is really intelligent, and will make you think a lot, not only about ambition, success, talent, selfishness (of some artists), but also what is reality in everyone's mind (beside fiction or dream), and how to deal with it, the part of "schizophrenia" and so on... Their would be of course a lot more to say about this film, but the best thing to do is simply to go and make your own opinion... Enjoy it, it's a difficult (in some ways) movie, but it's a really beautiful one : a true masterpiece!
I can't remember a worse film
posted on 14 Sep 2008This movie is rubbish. The only good aspect was that my wife won our tickets, so we didn't have to part with good money to see it.Nothing worked for me. The characterisations were poor. Sam Neill (as always) played Sam Neill and even Charlotte Rampling (for whom I have great admiration) couldn't save the film. I can only compare it to Titanic - not the movie but the ship.Who was Angelica? I know she had something to do with Paradise (which was shown in reverse over the gate of the house right at the beginning, but the right way around for the rest of the movie), but, as a character, she wasn't introduced. Was this edited out, or was I in a coma at the time and missed it? What went wrong with the background shots? Alfred Hitchcock did a better job of them in the 60s. How can it be that, with all the modern technology, it was so obvious and poor? I quite simply did not believe any of it. One man after the movie came up to my wife and myself with a bemused smile on his face and asked, "What was that all about?" He said he was expecting Angel to wake up and find it all a dream. My comment in reply, "Mas more like a nightmare" The only thing I found even remotely interesting was the way Esme used the wheelchair Angel gave him to hang himself from. This gives some idea as to how boring I found the rest! I suffered the movie expecting my wife to say that she found it moving (i.e. I thought it had to be a "chick flick" that only women can enjoy). Meanwhile, Barbara sat through it thinking that I must have found something "arty" about it. If we had only known, we could have walked out and not had to endure the torture.I could not, in all consciousness, recommend this movie - even to a person I hate.None of it worked; none of it inspired; none of it entertained. It was even too horrible to be amusing.
Angel flying too close to the ground...
posted on 24 Jun 2008In "Huit Femmes" Ozon had already displayed his penchant for Douglas Sirk.The deer in the snow was borrowed from "All that Heaven allows" .It is not surprising he has tackled pure melodrama as he claims Sirk's as well as Minnelli's influence.But that was then and this is now:like the thriller which has undergone some changes since Hitchcock or the sci-fi flick which has never been the same after "2001" ,you cannot conceive a melodrama like those respectable directors of the fifties used to do. "Far from Heaven" was ,for instance,what melodrama should be nowadays:while leaning on the Sirkesque tradition,it nonetheless turned its back on the reactionary side which was latent in such works as "imitation of life" and it made the heroine a soon-to-be civil rights activist.Ozon registered the same desire but it's too little : his heroine,a working class girl who hit the big time with her novels read by the populace tries to react against the war ("blinded by blood" ) but this is short-lived ;there's also the homosexual-side-you-find-in-every-film-Ozon-has-made .Here he suggests lesbian tendencies between Angel and her sister-in-law but it's only skimmed over.WW1 does not seem to be that much a serious subject in the movie.When he made a melodrama about WW2 ,Sirk seemed much more concerned ("A time to love and a time to die"),arguably because he knew what war was .It's the supporting cast who walks away with the honors: the always reliable Charlotte Rampling and Sam Neill.The main character is not particularly endearing in her "paradise" .The cinematography ,with golden and red colors ,is dazzling and tries to imitate the Merchant/Ivory productions.A lot of pounds were obviously spent but Ozon's first works ("Sitcom" "Les Amants Criminels" ) with their low budgets were much more absorbing.
A Nutshell Review: Angel
posted on 18 Jun 2008Based on the novel by Elizabeth Taylor, this Francois Ozon directed movie was the closing film of the Berlin Film Festival last year, and while it played out like a biography of a fictional character, you can't help but to imagine how close it seemed to the flamboyance of the other Liz Taylor being infused into the titular character.Movies based on biographies, such as Miss Potter with Rene Zellweger and La Vie En Rose with Marion Cotillard, seem to follow a formula of rags to riches, and basically living the dream that no one had imagined was possible. Naturally, being blessed with a talent and a gift helps too, and with Angel Deverell (Romola Garai), hers was a steely resolve of wanting to break out of her poverty cycle through her writing, an aspiring novelist with limited life experience, relying solely on her vivid imagination to paint literary marvels with her firm grasp of language, constructing sentences like a wordsmith many times her age.What made her character compelling to watch and follow, is her living in a fantasy world she constructs for herself, which suits her perfectly as it provides for and fuels her imagination with romantic stories to enchant and endear herself to her readers. It shields her from her insecurities, but in doing so, she slowly isolates herself into her view of Paradise, and becomes a chronic liar, which I felt she's constantly aware of, but is ashamed to admit any stain in the perfect world.Delivered in two distinct acts, things start to change when she meets the Howe-Nevisons. Nora (Lucy Russell), probably her #1 fan who simply worships the ground she treads on, and offers to be her personal assistant, and her brother Esme (Michael Fassbender from 300 who said they'll fight in the shade!), with whom Angel falls head over heels for. And this stifling relationship takes a toil on all parties involved, with shades of possible lesbianism played down in the film (though I'm unsure what became of it in the novel). While Angel had her break from Theo (Sam Neill) the publisher who believed in her, Esme the aspiring painter has none, besides Angel who would probably say Yes to anything he says. And his portrait of her probably was the highlight for me in the movie. If a portrait painter needs to, and can peer directly into your innermost soul and bring whatever qualities he sees in you onto the canvas, then Esme would have succeeded with his god-ugly picture of Angel, reinforces meaning of being beautiful on the outside. but ugly on the inside.The special effects were quite badly done, and perhaps deliberately too, as it's made up of very obviously superimposed shots of backgrounds that no longer exist because of modernization. Other than that, the rest of the production values are high, and the costumes too which Angel decked herself in, are quite a sight to behold, especially when there's a call for a change in colours to reflect the mood of the story as it wore on.But what made this movie very palatable, is how Romola Garai carried the role through the story. You can just about believe the very naiveness and devil may care attitude that her Angel brings, however always seemingly able to hide and bury her true feelings deep within herself, and being a master manipulator also helped loads. Like how Charlotte Rampling's character of the publisher's wife reflected, you just can't help but to pity Angel, despite her pomp, flamboyance and hypocrisy.So if you're interesting in a movie that provides avenue for an intriguing study of a person putting on a very fake mask, then Angel, despite its title, will be the movie for you to examine human traits which are anything but angelic.
Baaaaad film -- where's the twist?
posted on 09 Apr 2008I went to see "Angel" only because I'm a fan of Francois Ozon's films, which are often weird, quirky, with plot twists.But alas, I had to sit through 2 hours of pure, corny melodrama, so corny that you wonder whether it isn't a joke! But then, it continues, and you realize that the bad acting, the bad sets, and stereotypical, predictable storyline are serious!! No twists, no making fun, just straight drivel.Why an intelligent film-maker like Ozon would make such a bad, bland, boring film is beyond me.Romola Garai's acting style is horribly overdone. She was a lot better in Scoop. In Angel, she repeatedly gazes out into the proverbial distance, flings herself on beds when upset, and generally acts so insolent you want to slap her (not for her character's being insolent, but for bad acting).Fassbender's acting is only slightly better, but he is obviously constrained by the painfully predictable melodramatic storyline.Sam Neill and Charlotte Rampling shine by their understated, correctly-dosed performances. But then you wonder why their talent is being wasted in such a film !Their performance and the costumes worn by Angel are really the only interesting things in the film....
La vie rêvée des anges
posted on 07 Apr 2008It starts quite strangely for a movie about the life of a romantic novel writer in the early XX century Britain, with a wannabe Danny Elfman's music, an ugly pink opening, and an actress obviously too old for the part she plays. But, as the movie goes on, if the strangeness still remains, all this elements begin to make sense and create and original, and I think, never experimented on screen, world. ANGEL is indeed a really good surprise if you manage to accept and enter the inner world that the movie describes, and the kitsch atmosphere of Ozon's style (witch was for me unbearable in his previous movies, like "8 Femmes", but that absolutely fits the subject of this movie). When I learned that Ozon directed a movie in English about a young artist, I was waiting for a sort of kitsch version of ESTER KAHN (the wonderful movie another French director – Arnaud Despechin – made about a young lady in Britain in the early XX century), but I couldn't be more wrong : ANGEL is a sort of feminine (or Gay) version of Tim Burton's ED WOOD, describing how a strong imagination – no matter how bad it is – can completely recreates the world, and how you can fully lives in a fantasy universe, when you believe hard enough in your talent and your art .The movie tells us the life of Angel (Ramola Garai, who has everything to become the new Ludivine Sagner for François Ozon), from her childhood, where she dreams, upstairs the family's grocery, of the fastidious and glamorous life of a famous writer, to her success in the house of her dreams : Paradise house, where she has everything she ever dreamed of when she was young. The originality of this movie is that everything is seen with Angel's eyes. And her eyes only see what her imagination tells them to see, for she doesn't live in reality, but always fills it with dreams, so that she can live as if she were one of her romantic heroine. Whatever awful and sad the word might be, it never touches Angel, for she always transforms it with her imagination the way she wants. And imagination, she has plenty... Of course, her world is a childish, puerile and kitsch world of a bad Barbara Cartland 's novel and the movie completely recreates it on screen, with all the artifices it supposes : from the colors – that explains the pink – to the situations : when she proposes Esme, the man she chooses to love, the rain suddenly stops when he says yes, and a rainbow appears : empirical reality doesn't exist here, for Angel is unable to see it. But, and here's the all interest of the movie, the spectator, on the other hand, is absolutely able to watch it.This tension between the strong believing that Angel puts in her world, and the ridiculous that the spectator sometimes sees in it, is mostly tangible thought other character's eyes (like Charlotte Ramplin is the more judgmental, she's the first to condemn Angel's books, but mostly for personal reasons : she can't stand the pretentious and rude young lady with whom her husband is falling in love, or Esme, the untalented painter, who is also one of this ambiguous character, for he accepts his wife universe, but is unable to really find his place in this fictive world). And the movie constantly plays with this two degrees, witch brings humanity, cruelties and sadness to the shinny but unreal world it describes. That's also why this movie is so surprising : we never know exactly where we are : is this a dream, when will it stops, will reality goes after it in the end ? This constant instability regenerates the spectator interest for this movie, and keep it far from the classical costumed movie about the rise and fall of an English women writer it could have been.That's also why this movie reminds me of Tim Burton's ED WOOD, for, beyond their differences, they both deal with the same thematic of the triumph of an artistic imagination over the world, and the fall that fallows this triumph, and they also share a melancholic tone, as well as real understanding and compassion for untalented but passionate artists.
the melodrama dilemma
posted on 10 Mar 2008Hmmmm... if the reviews and comments I've seen are any indication, melodrama is as divisive as ever. I found Ozon's approach admirable: intelligent and objective but not satirically distanced, like Fassbinder without the cruelty. It seems clear to me that he is showing us not a realistic depiction of Angel's life but a version colored by her imagination. The intention is not to mock her but to allow us to share her experience, and to make up our own minds about the value of her fantasies. The closest to an authorial statement comes from the character least sympathetic to Angel: Charlotte Rampling as the publisher's wife comments that in spite of Angel's lack of talent or self-knowledge, she has to admire her drive to succeed. Of course we're not compelled to agree, but it strikes me as a fair assessment.The reactions to this movie remind me of the uncomprehending dismissal of Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, another story of a shallow, self-involved woman that insists on looking through her eyes. This kind of scrupulous generosity is in line with a tradition going back to Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and both directors have the stylistic confidence to carry it off. It may just be that they don't have the critics they deserve.
Misguided embarrassment
posted on 13 Aug 2007I'm a great admirer of Francois Ozon's French movies (Swimming Pool, Under the Sand, 8 Women) but this, his first foray into English language drama, is a stinker. Adapted from a book by Elizabeth Taylor about an Edwardian novelist whose life fails to live up to her romantic fantasies it is as ridiculous, clichéd and overwritten as any of the heroine's creations; hard to know if this is the fault of the source material or Ozon's adaptation (though he has been assisted by acclaimed playwright and translator Martin Crimp). You watch it in disbelief, unsure if you're meant to laugh or not, faintly hoping that this is a deliberate attempt at post-modern ironic detachment (but wondering what would be the point) and gradually realising that Ozon thinks he is Douglas Sirk and has completely embarrassed himself.The actors look all at sea, particularly Romola Garai who can't give any charm to the unlikeable heroine, and Ozon adopts a stiff and old-fashioned style of film-making - complete with syrupy music and terrible back projections - which make the film look as it it was made in 1936 rather than 2006; I'd like to think this was a deliberate if unfortunate miscalculation but the consequence is that the finished product looks stilted and amateurish. Only Charlotte Rampling - Ozon's muse - almost saves the day, but her air of sardonic detachment probably says more about her feelings towards the film than about her character.
Fallen Angel
posted on 25 Apr 2007A group of girls march in succession toward their daily lesson, both their step and their outfits similar in fashion, until one girl breaks from the mold and finds herself at the gates of paradise, forced to gaze from afar. The girl is Angel, the title character from French director, Francois Ozon's first venture into English-language film. Don't let the name fool you though; there is nothing remotely angelic about her. She is spoiled, loud and delusional – everything you want in a heroine you're supposed to root for and just the kind of person you want to see get everything they desire. Right?Angel is a writer, not a very good writer but people love her. She refuses to live in the real world in favor of the perfect illusion she believes she has crafted for herself. It all raises many questions about success and talent, sanity and vanity, but no matter how wickedly she is played by Romola Garai, the woman is too wretched to inspire sympathy in the viewer and Ozon does nothing to help.Ozon's past efforts range in form from ridiculous and satirical to contemplative and tragic. His transition into the realm of period drama is daring considering the smaller size of his previous works but he juggles the elements well. In fact, he balances back and forth between the elaborate costumes, grandiose sets and exaggerated performances so well that it all feels rather plain. Considering how allergic Angel was to the mundane, I don't think she would have been very pleased with this. And trust me, you wouldn't like her mad.
Angel? More like spoilt brat.
posted on 19 Apr 2007Now I must admit I've not read the book, but I cannot believe that it can be this bad. The dialogue is awful. At the beginning of the film the lead (totally out of her depth) speaks like a 21st century adolescent. What child in Victorian times would have spoken to her mother like she did, stomped off, slammed her bedroom door and not come down to dinner? I was amazed that she didn't switch on her I-Pod. A totally unsympathetic character - gauche is probably a compliment. And the literature she was supposed to be producing? Gothic rubbish (see Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey for a put down of this tripe)? The outcome of the relationship with her husband was totally predictable - oh, how ironic at the end! What a waste of Sam Neill and one of my favourite actresses, Charlotte Rampling. Tyntesfield looked good though - mind you, in these days of 'global warming' we don't get snow in Wraxall anymore.
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Ozon's first film in the English language – showy but hollow
posted on 20 Aug 2009Seen in the Toronto International Film Festival, with personal appearance of director Francois Ozon and lead Romola Garai. And the Festival is indeed a case in point for globalization, with among other things two film in French directed respectively by a Taiwanese and a Canadian, and French director Ozon directing his first film in English (English, that is, not a funny language called "American"). But I digress.Whether you like Francois Ozon's films, you can't deny that he has a way of grabbing your attention, with films such as haunting "Sous le sable", playful "8 femmes" and surreal "Swimming Pool". Bad news, Ozon admirers, as "Angel" comes considerable short compared with any of these remarkable (if not all superb) films.For his first venture in English language filming, Ozon teams up with Elizabeth Taylor (not that one). "Team up" is perhaps not a totally accuracy description because this is the late Elizabeth Taylor, a little-known writer who died more than 30 years ago and whose novels are out-of-print. To Ozon, however, "The real live of Angel Deverell" "was like 'Gone with the wind'".Watching "Angel" in the Elgin Theatre in downtown Toronto (where I had watched "Cats" four time), I couldn't help but wonder if Ozon was just looking for ANY story that he could use to parody "Gone with the wind". The stories are actually quite different, but Ozon uses every opportunity to parody. My memory of GWTW is rather vague but there are a couple of scenes in "Angel" when Scarlett O'Hara pops right out of the picture. Judging from the chuckles and laughter of mirth from my fellow audience (many at places when they are expected to sob or sigh) I suspect that there are a lot more that I have missed (as well as parodies of other Hollywood classics too).But what is the point, other than showcasing some glamorous set pieces and gorgeous costumes reminiscent of Hollywood in the 40s and 50s? Not much. The story of a totally unattractive girl (character-wise) rising to stardom through a series of romance novels she pens is uninteresting. Her mindless possessiveness of a man (a painter) purported to have talents but no breaks is cliché. Typically Ozon, the element of homosexuality in hinted, if not elaborated, here between her and the man's sister who is devoted to her. Maybe, as some suggest, the whole thing is to show how this girl lives in the dream world from which she awakes, ironically, only at the call of death. But with none of the characters worth feeling for, the whole thing falls apart.I maintain that perhaps Ozon is trying too hard to impress the English speaking audience, and it backfires. Romola Garai, so well received in "I capture the castle" (2003) has tried hard to bring life to a title role that is somewhat hollow, a thankless job. Ozon's favourite Charlotte Rampling (mesmerizing in "Sous le sable") is nothing more than a cameo, playing the publisher's wife. Oh yes, Sam Neill who plays the publisher is getting to look and "feel" more and more like James Mason.