(La Vie Rêvée des Anges)
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Director: Erick Zonca Screenplay: Erick Zonca & Roger Bohbot Starring: Élodie Bouchez, Natacha Régnier, Grégoire Colin, Patrick Mercado, Jo Prestia Running Time: 113 minutes Studio: Sony Pictures Classics MPAA Rating: R |
Having been inured to a steady diet of nothing but Hollyweird releases during my recent stint at The Mining Co. webnet, it's refreshing to be covering independent and foreign features again, like the poetic Lovers of the Arctic Circle and the brain-bending Open Your Eyes.
But a steady diet of junk food can sometimes dull your senses. You lose a fine sense of palette for otherwise moving and deeply-felt creations like, say, Rushmore or, closer to hand, The Dreamlife of Angels.
It's either that, or Dreamlife is the most over-praised movie since... well, since Rushmore.
So many people couldn't be wrong, could they? Both Élodie Bouchez and Natacha Régnier won the Best Actress awards at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, and have also won César awards (the French Oscar) for their performances. (Bouchez won for Best Actress, Régnier won for Best Newcomer.) Janet Maslin (film critic for The New York Times) has written, "This impassioned first feature reveals a soulful, moving vision of our shared responsibility for one another's lives. A beautifully acted drama as raw and immediate as it is heartfelt." Kenneth Turan, film critic for The Los Angeles Times proclaims, "...[I]ts achievement as a film is also due to the shrewd attention to character by screenwriter-director Erick Zonca, here making his feature film debut."
As the film starts, it seems so... ordinary. Isabelle Tostin (Bouchez) -- Isa, for short -- hikes into the industrial town of Lille, in the north of France. Because her friend has skipped town for Belgium, she's forced to sleep on the streets, making money by selling "postcards" (illustrations from magazines that she glues to cardstock) for imaginary charities. A chance encounter lands her a factory job as a seamstress, where she befriends another 20-year-old woman, Marie Thomas (Régnier), who also seems to be drifting through life, living hand-to-mouth. Isa invites herself to stay at Marie's place, an apartment she's watching for a mother and teenage daughter, both in the hospital following a traffic accident. Marie and Isa are polar opposites: Marie is sullen, moody, resentful of her poverty; Isa carries hope around her like a big neon sign that lights up almost as bright as her infectious smile and wide eyes.
