Sorry Angel

Maybe, the fundamental virtue of film is to demonstrate nothing. It is only a story about relationship, about choices, love, life, happiness and fall. Not for impress, not for be manifesto, it seems more a sort of confession to the viewer, exploration of pieces of life, delicate confesions and easy portraits of the imposibility to be the expected one by the other and invitation to discover, from other perspective, the life. No doubts, a beautiful film but, unfortunatelly, not the most convincing. But nice.

The world has changed a lot since the French New Wave. Audiences have shorter attention spans and don't seem to enjoy literary films as much. I gage if a film is too long by whether I look at my watch in a cinema or pause a streaming one at home to see how mich is left. I did neither on this film.

I was pulled into this film's world. It's yet another film that reminds me that I love the French cinema. This witty, complex, sexy, dramatic, funny, intelligent, literary, romantic, completely honest portrait of gay life in 1993, captured nuances of gay life not seen in American film. The acting is terrific.

The person who saw Sorry Angel with me initially mislabeled it as another gay-AIDS-relationship movie, missing the point: It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it. Christophe Honore never lacks ideas, and--to his good fortune--he does what he pleases. He takes risks and successfully avoids cliches; Honore is one of the world's brightest, funniest, savvy auteurs...His movies are earmarked by nostalgic romanticism, but they never wallow in the past because he is able to pay tribute without imitation, a technique that evades so many of his contemporaries.

Sorry Angel is about relationships. You do not need to be gay to watch it, but you need to understand humanity and compassion. Honore gets to the meat without chewing on the fat while his poignant dialogue is relatable to everyone eventually. The context of the movie (the 90's AIDS epidemic) is a setting for the text (based on the director's university years and his gay idols, writers and directors who died from the disease) but it is the subtext, Honore's observations about relationships--discerning, unsentimental, realistic portrayals of humans both gay and straight--which elevates the movie to the forefront of cinematic reflections. Where Robin Campillo's recent BPM (another stunner) focuses on activism, Honore shows us sympathy and love during an era of uncertainty and chaos.

Jonathan Romney notes that Sorry Angel is a "novelistic film" because it presents itself like great literature. The plot might be purposefully transparent, but the devil is in the details.

The characters felt real. I could connect with and care about them. At first, I thought it would be love conquers all but the path to love isn't always a pleasant one and still ita may not lead to happily ever after. That last part of the movie struck me on a level I can't yet explain. As I said, I loved the movie and even hours after watching, I'll still thinking of the characters.

Christophe Honore is a director who has never interested me much; Dans Paris was a bore, and most of his features haven't played in North America. He has talent, but not a narrative sense. His actors carry the movie along, but even they can't do anything about the last 30 minutes, which are a total waste of time.

Setting the story in 1993, with ACT-UP just starting in France, we are fed disjointed scenes with characters who drift in and out of the action. Pierre Deladonchamps is convincing as Jacques, and Denys Podalydes has some cynical and funny scenes. I'd really like to try Chouchen, the Breton liqueur.