The Romantic Life of an English Woman Writer
Admirers of Fran?ois Ouillon and fans of all sorts can't afford to miss out on seeing this Angel on the big screen in a movie theater, no matter what. Ouillon continues his alliance with literature, melodrama and comedy in his film "Angel," which became the closing film of the 57th Berlin Film Festival. Also the French director's first all-English-language feature, "Angel" is an adaptation of Elizabeth Taylor's 1957 novel of the same name, which originally depicted the ups and downs of the life of a poor but individualistic British author in the early 1900s.
Elizabeth Taylor's 1957 novel was inspired by Marie Corelli, an Englishwoman who wrote 28 full-length romantic novels with touching plots that were extremely popular with readers. Taylor atypically draws from her entire oeuvre, and is in fact a satirical portrayal of the overzealousness of melodrama at the time. The movie is explicit even before the central character, Angel Deverell, makes his debut, bringing the writer's genius to the screen, but stripping it of any irony and leaving only wit. The end of the movie becomes a bit hollow and comes off as flashy, when literature (and character archetypes) should be portrayed with irony at this point. Also, the dialog sounds like an English translation of a French film and the performances, despite the strong cast, are curious from beginning to end. This same dialog problem was present in Fran?ois Ouillon's previous film Swimming Pool (2003), but it's not as pronounced. The characters' speech is handled in an almost simplistic, read-aloud style, like a British stage play, with the crucial scenes led by promising star Romara Garre. As for the flashy costumes, the 134-minute running time of the film, which features the entire life of the gifted writer, is neither a mechanical imitation of Fran?ois Ouillon's previous film 8 femmes (2002), without the playful sequences and sense of humor, nor is it like his profoundly elegant and emotionally delicate literary psychoanalytic film Sous le sable ( 2000).
French director Ouillon's dilemma
Like Almodóvar's "La Mala educación" (2004), "Angels" could be said to reflect exactly the dilemma in which the director finds himself, combining the style of the pure melodrama of the heavily camp-flavored film "8 femmes" (8 femmes), while also continuing to explore the the alternating realities of real life and the realm of fantasy, which are just as much a part of Swimming Pool and Under the Sand as they are of Bad Education. The way the film is adapted may disappoint those who were expecting to see the full work by watching the movie; it's like a great original English novel being released in installments in a single newspaper. As with Octomom, the entire movie is divided into segments. While knowing all of O'Yung's previous work might help somewhat in watching this movie, it's still hard to say what kind of audience will accept "Angel".
One of Ouillon's previous films was "Temps qui reste, Le (2005)," which is just as short and concise as "Angel," with a terminally ill young man coming to grips with his own mortality, and finally deciding to tell no one about his condition except his aging grandmother. In Angel, in stark contrast to him, is a successful young novelist: she wouldn't imagine not telling others about herself. Her job is to create love stories, and her own real life is like a fairy tale, constantly being rewritten for her publisher, her friends, and even herself. There is so much to be gained from every romantic love experience, and that is when that person realizes that it is just another twist and test that will all end up in a big happy ending.
Homage to '50s Hollywood style
Shot on location in England and Belgium, the film's costume designer Pascaline Chavanne and art director Katia Wyszkop spend their days working with piles of costumes and vintage artifacts to produce the style of Edward VII-era England, again with the full cooperation of cinematographer Denis Lenoir. and photographer Denis Lenoir. Music composer Philippe Rombi scores the film with a full orchestra, which is intended to be a 50's-style Hollywood movie, but instead makes the movie seem surprisingly hollow. Like "Octomom," with its Agatha Christie-esque murder-mystery flavor to the film's soundtrack, "Angel" begins with a snowy outdoor scene, staged in a way that every scene is meticulously designed, with costumes, music, and cinematography, and when filming begins in front of the film's backdrop, all of the elements make up a complete synthetic work of art in the form of an ouroboros.
"Octomom" as well as "Angel," both of which clearly pay homage to the iconic melodrama style created by Technicolor Films and especially Douglas Secker in 1950s Hollywood, elevate artifice to the heights of the fabulous. The similarity to another hilarious work of cinematic synthetic art, Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! (2001), is that the film takes only a small portion of the novel's plot and uses it as a motivation to make a big deal out of it, searching for emotional overtones that are commensurate with, and meant to be overdramatized by, caring more about emotional authenticity than historical accuracy. Because of this, many of the costumes in Angel are, on the one hand, so beautifully designed that they look like the girls from The Adventures of Priscilla (1994), ready to go to a fashion show in their elaborate outfits.