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Angel (2007/I) Plus avec IMDbPro »

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30 utilisateurs sur 41 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
La vie rêvée des anges, 28 mars 2007

Auteur : moimoichan6 (moimoichan6@yahoo.fr) de Paris, France

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.

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20 utilisateurs sur 29 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
An utterly melodramatic present-day "Gone with the wind", 22 août 2007

Auteur : Ton van der Velden de Pays-Bas

I really love this movie and keep seeing it again and again, as it reminds me very much of (as Ozon intended) the 1930's-40's epic melodramas and the role of Angel Deverell was intended to be like Vivien Leigh in "Gone with the wind". Even before I had read that I thought about this all the time.It's very rare to find nowadays a movie with modern-days technical perfection (brilliant colours and costumes and sound)but a 1940's style. Everything is over the top, unbelievable but for me going to a movie means suspension of disbelief, do we need a film to be like reality? I don't go to cinema to see reality, but to be taken to a different world, one of romance and it hardly gets more romantic than this. Read the interviews at www.francois-ozon.com and you will understand it all a lot better. This movie does not deserve the criticism it gets here as that's comparing apples with oranges. This movie is PERFECT as it is made almost flawlessly and in a (for costume movie lovers) very lavish way, a great joy to watch and listen to, not to mention a very energetic and passionate Romola Garai, who I will love to see also in "Atonement". A nice touch, in line with the 1940's style, is that trips to London, Venice, Greece, Egypt are made the way they did in those days, not on location but a filmed background. Nothing is very realistic in this movie, but it shows what dreams are made of and I thank the director and actors highly for many hours of fantastic entertainment. In it's genre it's just as good as Lord of the Rings, which also did not have to be real to be wonderful, did it?

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6 utilisateurs sur 8 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
Angel, 28 novembre 2007

Auteur : anton_hartl de Ried im Innkreis, Autriche

*** Ce commentaire peut contenir des spoilers ***

Watching "Angel" by French filmmaker François Ozon was a quite interesting experience. As often, when a film turns out to be different than I had thought, at first I didn't really like what I saw. I went into the cinema knowing practically nothing about what I had to expect and found myself in a movie with over the top acting, corny dialogue and a dislikeable main character. It was after some time in the movie that I realized, Ozon used the style of old Hollywood melodramas to enforce the pompous and passionate character of Angel's writing and to at the same time add ironic breaks to an otherwise fairy tale story. But still, Ozon shows a lot of love for Angel on screen and does not use the irony to demonstrate his superiority. Now, quite a while after watching "Angel", the film still sticks in my mind and crosses my thoughts now and then, which is a proof to me that I really saw an impressive work, that mixes an antique style with narrative intransigence unseen in melodramas of the old days.

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12 utilisateurs sur 20 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
Misguided embarrassment, 13 janvier 2008

Auteur : Malcolm Webster de Royaume-Uni

I'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.

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7 utilisateurs sur 11 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
A Nutshell Review: Angel, 10 mai 2008

Auteur : DICK STEEL de Singapour

Based 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.

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9 utilisateurs sur 15 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
the melodrama dilemma, 21 janvier 2008

Auteur : princehal de Autriche

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.

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1 utilisateurs sur 1 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
Crass, banal and a waste of your time!, 26 octobre 2009

Auteur : il_penguino de Royaume-Uni

I don't normally bother writing reviews. For this total waste of space an exception has to be made though. We picked this thinking it might be some sort of historical costume drama. What it is turns out to be is an incoherent, ill constructed mess full of historical inaccuracies with an unbelievable plot and even more unbelievable characters. Now suspending disbelief is all part of the art of film but only when the film isn't meant to be taken seriously. If this was meant to be a parody of the genre then it might have some merit but it's clear it takes itself entirely seriously.

I just wish I'd read some of the other reviews before renting this DVD and saved myself the trouble. Do yourself a favour and "move along, nothing to see here".

On the other hand there is a plus. Never having read anything written by Liz Taylor I now know I don't need to as she simply can't write a bad story let alone a good one.

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11 utilisateurs sur 21 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
Ozon seems to have missed the point, 1 novembre 2007

Auteur : rosiehallett de Royaume-Uni

What 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.

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2 utilisateurs sur 4 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
Fallen Angel, 5 juin 2008

Auteur : Joseph Belanger (moutonbear@videotron.ca) de Montreal

A 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.

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2 utilisateurs sur 4 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
Almost totally without merit, 15 avril 2008

Auteur : Michael Open de Belfast, NI

*** Ce commentaire peut contenir des spoilers ***

I 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.

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