Conquistar, Amar e Viver Intensamente

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.

Two men fall in love with the idea of the other during the AIDS crisis and all hell breaks loose. Of course this is a storyline we've seen so many times in cinemas, but the truth is the approach in this one is very romantic and unique. The end result is sadly something I was expecting and of course not as powerful as it should have been. The main theme is not the AIDS pandemic but rather the way two people can fall in love so unexpectedly even if their lives are set in different directions. The movie drags a lot, is really slow-paced at times and the main protagonists are not always in focus thus never showcasing their chemistry. This could have been a different movie but sadly it almost feels unfinished or not fully realised.

Fundamentally ordinary yet incredibly self-centered, the characters in Christophe Honore's "Sorry, Angel" are not easy people to like. They are mostly a group of gay and bisexual men with complicated lives who find that relationships aren't necessarily what they're good at; even having a job, earning a living or just being 'themselves' also seem to pose a problem. The two main characters are Jacques, a writer in his thirties, (Pierre Deladonchamps), and Arthur, (Vincent Lacoste), a younger student, who meet, have sex and then go about the business of falling in love but find 'happy ever after' something of a pipedream.

It's territory Honore has explored before and more explicitly but this well-crafted, if overtly cool, movie represents something of a step forward if only in terms of style. This is a more formal, less kinetic, Honore but one still unable to shake off that sense of ennui. The performances are excellent but the characters aren't engaging. Also setting it at a time when AIDS was more prevalent than it is now seems like an unnecessary plot device rather than an attempt to get us to understand or care more about the people we see. Throw in a girlfriend and Jacques' young son and you get the impression that Honore is going out of his way to be 'cool' as if making a gay epic but one without a centre. Add a load of references to cinema and literature and you know exactly who this is aimed at. One for the fans, i'm afraid.

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.

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.