The Dreamlife Of Angels ***1/2
rated R in French with English subtitles starring Elodie Bouchez, Natacha Regnier, Gregoire Colin, Jo Prestia, Patrick Mercado written by Erick Zonca and Roger Bohbot directed by Erick Zonca
First films are usually clumsy, experimental, and uneven. But 43-year-old Erick Zonca has turned the tables with his first film, THE DREAMLIFE OF ANGELS. Like many French films, THE DREAMLIFE OF ANGELS is slow-paced, but the surplus of emotion makes up for the lack of plot. The film features two outstanding performances from Elodie Bouchez and Natacha Regnier, who shared the Best Actress award at last year's Cannes Film Festival, while Peter Mullan took home Best Actor for MY NAME IS JOE, a similar emotional experience.
The first character we meet in THE DREAMLIFE OF ANGELS is Isa(Elodie Bouchez), an impoverished drifter with a past we never learn much about. She wanders into a French city, selling homemade postcards which she says are for the poor. A man whom she meets in a cafe lets her have a sewing job in his factory. In the factory, she meets Marie(Natacha Regnier), a shy woman given to fits of rage. Marie agrees to let Isa stay at her flat, which she is taking care of for a woman who was in a car crash with her young daughter. Isa and Marie become friends, and during a night on the town, they meet Charly(Patrick Mercado) and Fredo(Jo Prestia), a couple of bouncers from a nearby nightclub. Charly and Marie are involved until she meets Chris(Gregoire Colin), a rich playboy who owns the club. It is obvious that Marie is with the wrong man, and it seems to be tearing her apart, and slowly she is suffering a nervous breakdown. Meanwhile, Isa has begun to read the personal diary of the girl who was in the car crash, and she begins to visit the child in the hospital, day after day.
THE DREAMLIFE OF ANGELS doesn't offer much in the way of a plot, and it takes quite a while to get going, but soon it's not hard to see that the film is a study of two characters, and since they are portrayed so realistically, it's hard not to feel emotionally drained after watching the film. The filmmaking is sometimes raw, and sometimes graceful, depending on the mood of the scene. Erick Zonca is amazingly gifted, because it takes many filmmakers a few films to create such a sense of powerful immediacy. THE DREAMLIFE OF ANGELS is a superb, riveting film, and is sure to be among the best first films of the year.
a review by Akiva Gottlieb, The Teenage Movie Critic akiva@excite.com http://www.angelfire.com/mo/film watch me on TBS' "Dinner And A Movie" May 21, 8:05pm EST
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