Saint Ange

For the life of me, I cannot understand the fierce and almost resentful nature of many of the opinions given here. I was fully prepared to see another one of those over-blown affairs that put style over substance and usually bore me to bits after 15 minutes or so of their „Amélie"-type smugness and undeserved self-confidence. In fact. SAINT ANGE is a very careful, very sensitive story of a young woman who struggles with her feelings about her impending motherhood. The ending made perfect sense to me, whether read as a ghost story of sorts or a paranoid fantasy. The actresses are uniformly excellent, particularly Virginie Ledoyen and Lou Doillon, as is Catriona MacColl, who you might still remember from those colorful Fulci extravaganzas from the early eighties. The splendid photography makes good use of the grey and cold blue colours of the orphanage, which is embedded in green and brown tones – Mother Nature. The fantasy ending also introduces a clinical white for good measure. In view of the many cinematic exercises of today that talk their subtexts to death, SAINT ANGE uses a formal elegance that is breath-taking. Actually, I didn't find one single frame that was superfluous. In a way, the film also shares several themes with Laugier's well-received and harrowing MARTYRS, as it is basically another – albeit more tender – tale of a bruised young woman under dire circumstances. The ending of MARTYRS can also be read as a paranoid fantasy, with traces of hope hidden in a complex framework of depressing human depravity. No, I liked SAINT ANGE a lot. And, by the way, Joe Lo Duca – who started with Sam Raimi's THE EVIL DEAD – delivered a haunting and memorable music score. An excellent movie.

I don't usually watch horror movies, but this one had such a good look to it that I thought it might turn out to be a "thinking person's" movie like THE HAUNTING or THE UNINVITED. As it went along, I started thinking more of TURN OF THE SCREW, because there were implications that the visions Anna was having were due to her unexplained previous abuse and her mysterious pregnancy...and she was making others believe in the visions (like the nanny in TURN OF THE SCREW). But how does that account for the boy's death at the beginning? The last third of the movie is a complete letdown because of the introduction of fantasy elements beyond the limits of the movie up to that point. (The elevator is the first clue that we're going off track.) I can't believe how many IMDb posters actually seem to believe that the subterranean scenes are somehow "real." There is no evidence that anything sinister was ever done to the children who came to Saint-Ange during WWII. There are SO many interesting ways this movie could have played out...too bad they chose a dud ending. However, I have to say that Joseph LoDuca (Xena) did a marvelous score, which has to sustain a huge amount of silent action. This is definitely a movie to watch with a fast forward button.

I cant believe some of the comments i've read on here about this film! It was very slow paced and wasn't very scary or disturbing, but the cinematography was beautiful, as were the sets and the music, although the music didn't go with some scenes and took away the films eerie atmosphere. If you enjoy supernatural films such as "The others" then this may not be as good but is still worth watching because it is slow and creepy and it does build up to some spooky scenes. The acting was OK, nothing special, but watchable. I would give this film a chance, i found other peoples bad comments very misleading, they may not have enjoyed the film, but, although not brilliant, is not as bad as they make it out to be.

First off, this is supposed to come out as a treat for fans of Fulci's The Beyond (it even features the return of its star Catriona MacColl) and his other gloomy films. So it's got nice locations (romanian studios), pretty minimal as the whole movie takes place in a great mansion supposed to be a WWII orphanage, its narrowing woods and cellars. Cast is pretty top notch with kinky Virginie Ledoyen (L'Eau Froide, La Cérémonie, La fille seule - her only good movies in my opinion - The Beach) and wacko Lou Doillon (Jane Birkin's daughter - one of the most irritating actress to come out of french cinema lately, but physically disturbing and therefore probably appropriate for this movie!).

Beautiful photography, gloomy atmosphere, weird and nasty children (kinda reminiscent of the evil ones in Cronenberg's The Brood, but not really either), derelict locations, potential scream queens, this movie shows good production values but sadly remains pretty lazy storywise. I won't describe the story too much, but after a pretty classy/classic (easy) hour of ghost induced story, the movie goes wacko and tries to become a bit disturbing. Unfortunately, even if the scenery and filming shows you some very weird and dare I say effective clinical & morbid images (the only part giving the movie a little of its own personality), those images bears no real depth and fall flat in utter stupidity! So even though I admire the plastic quality of the last half hour, I remain highly skeptical in its capacity to convey an interesting story falling back on its feet without relying on weirdness because the lazy writer(s?) have no real vision of the story as a whole. Also, the twist revelation about the cats killer's identity is really lame. Sadly, another example of France incapacity to produce thoughtful and provocative fantasy...

Think a mixture of Furie's "The Entity", Robert Wise's "The Haunting" with Fulci's "The Beyond" and Chris Cunningham's clinical imagery.

Just one's opinion.

4/10

OK, so the film isn't great, but it surely ain't awful either. It is reminiscent of other films, The Innocents and The Others to name but two, but there's no harm in that. There's very few films today that could be called truly original these days. Originality doesn't matter, it's the telling of the story that matters, and like the aforementioned, this film moves at a slow pace, admittedly too slow at times but it does deliver a certain creepiness and suspense. Where this film falls down for some (taking into consideration the comments already left) is that it doesn't end with an explanation. But so what? Like The Innocents you are left to come up with your own conclusions and I for one like it when the facts aren't spelled out to me in cinematic semaphore. Ambiguity is all but lost under the onslaught of mind-numbing American releases that offer nothing but 90 minutes of entertainment and then nothing. Saint Ange is a film you can chew on for days afterwards. It's very well shot, capably acted and offers a few shivers along the way. Not nearly as bad as people would have you believe.