Angel - La vita, il romanzo

I've added Angel in my watch list about a month ago, after studying -quite a few- of Romola Garai's and Michael Fassbender's performances. Some of the films i've watched with Garai were: Inside I'm Dancing (2004), Mary Bryant (2005), Atonement (2007) and The Other Man (2008). She was brilliant in all of them. So she was in this film.

This is a fiction story based on a novel/screenplay by Elizabeth Taylor. It's kind of a biography of a young writer (Angel) with a not wealthy background that manages to finally publish her rich -in imagination- novels. What do you think, passionate love wouldn't knock on her door when she starts being famous? This is where Fassbender's role (Esme) comes in. Another artist, an underestimated painter who doesn't feel confident enough about his work and who also keeps some skeletons in his closet that will -later in the film- (much later) finally be revealed. Fassbender is a great performer but he doesn't get to shine here. Sam Neil plays the part of the overwhelmed publisher and Lucy Russell does a great supporting work as Esme's sister.

As i'm still new in screen writing and film structure, i found myself a bit worried about the way this movie was unfolded. Everything seemed so magical and dreamy and the drama was almost out of the plot for much longer than i expected. It had to make a turn! And it did and it was sudden, maybe a bit frustrating at some point, but you'll have your turning point eventually.

Since i've realized that there where practically two acts in this film i recalled the atmosphere, the costumes, the music and the colors that went along with the change. In the beginning everything was so bright and cheerful, then all turned pale and gloomy to show the depression, which you can clearly notice even in the clothes of the protagonist. There where only a few outdoor special effects that looked really out of date and weird for a 2007 production. I laughed and quickly forgot about them.

In a nutshell, it was a decent film -with a small cast- describing the intense, disturbed and not very long life of a young female writer in the early 20s, but nothing more to get excited about.

Hmmmm... 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.

My advice would be don't waste your time with this film.

Large chunks were clearly meant to be ironic but much was also meant to be more darkly realistic. The result was a wildly veering mish-mash of genres which the director failed to navigate successfully.

Overall, the film felt like a mix between a 1940s melodrama and a 1970s made-for-TV two-part series, with a loathsome central character.

Two people in our group of 20 loved the film, so it must have something going for it. The rest of us were desperate for it to be over from about 20 minutes in. At one point, the main character gets sick, and from behind me and beside me I heard simultaneous mutters of "please die" and "thank god". That was exactly how I felt.

I am sure the film was making all kinds of comments about art, literature, characterization etc etc but it all went sailing over my head. Driving home, I said as much to my flatmate, and he paraphrased Bill Hicks to me: "The film was bad. Don't get suckered into believing it actually saying something complex and clever. It was bad. Leave it at that and walk away".

It 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.

Angel Deverell (Romola Garai) imagines herself to be a writer. Night after night she writes of her imaginative world. At school, she is ridiculed for her fantasies, and her mother (Jacqueline Tong) has no idea of her talent. A London publisher Theo (Sam Neill), publishes her first book despite her arrogance and his reservations. The novel is a bestseller. She writes another and another and another, and so on.

At the height of her fame, she meets the painter Esmé (Michael Fassbender), and is immediately stuck, even if he is even more arrogant that she is. And, sad to say, more untalented.

This is the key to this film. It is a satire of those stories of the period. There are only two serious people in the film. The rest are caricatures of popular characters and settings.

British writer Elizabeth Taylor's novel, based upon Marie Corelli, a long-forgotten English novelist of the 19th Century, was translated to the screen by François Ozon (Swimming Pool, 8 Women), who also directed. He certainly captured the ego Corelli was reputed to have.

The life she lived or the life she dreamed? That is the question of this film. There is no doubt that for a few brief moments, Angel was never in touch with reality. It makes for great satire.