THE DREAMLIFE OF ANGELS
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Sony Pictures Classics Director: Erick Zonca Writer: Erick Zonca, Roger Bohbot Cast: Elodie Bouchez, Natacha Regnier, Gregoire Colin, Jo Prestia, Patrick Mercado
When I was younger and wiser and dating girls who had roommates, I was regularly amazed by how often these pairs of best friends would split up prematurely. The rate of breakdowns of twenty-somethings during the 1960s exceeded even the current frequency of divorce. Does living together ruin friendships? In many cases this seems to be true. To get more insight into the enigma, take in Erick Zonca's remarkably well-acted and poignant piece, "The Dreamlife of Angels." You'd not be at all surprised to know that this is the work that closed last year's New York Film Festival, featured not in the usual space but in the majestic and large Avery Fisher Hall--home of the New York Philharmonic.
The feature, which allowed the two principal performers to take best-actress awards at Cannes, is not just a heartbreaking story of two working-class women who are barely of age. It's a portrait of the lives of working-class women who wile away their wage-earning hours in soul-killing factory jobs, performing the same monotonous tasks hour after hour. This is the sort of film that should boost enrollment in colleges: only through a decent education can most young people avoid spirit-busting toil like that weathered by Marie and her friend Isa, who share a common age and occupation but who are psychologically very much different.
The movie opens in the Northern France town of Lille, where Isa (Elodie Bouchez), an array of rucksacks on her back, is peddling religious pictures on the street to make a few francs. She strikes up a conversation with a man in a cafe who is the manager of a factory turning out dresses, and is offered a job, where she becomes friendly with a fellow seamstress, Marie (Natacha Regnier). The two young women flirt with a couple of bouncers at a club, Charly (Patrick Mercado) and Fredo (Jo Prestia), and while Marie enjoys a brief affair with Charly, she is soon both attracted and repelled by the club's rich owner, Chriss (Gregoire Colin). The arrogant Chriss smoothly and duplicitously convinces Marie that he likes her, while Marie ignores her roommate's counsel that the affair cannot last.
"The Dreamlife of Angels" focuses equally on the two young women, portraying the wandering Isa as surprisingly stable and loving despite her homelessness, but the real drama accelerates as Marie--already unstable--begins to go off-the-wall. She fights on the least provocation, becomes seldom other than moody, and when her tenuous relationships begin to fall apart, she becomes desperate.
Hollywood films exploring the relationship between two women tend to be overly melodramatic and violent--"Thelma and Louise"--for example. The beauty of Erick Zonca's feature is the more natural performances he culls from two gifted thesps who, according to the production notes, were compelled to live together to get the feel of both the intimacy and the quandary such closeness produces. "The Dreamlife of Angels" is a work of accomplished earthiness and sincerity.
Not Rated. Running Time: 113 minutes. (C) 1999 Harvey Karten
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