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Angel – A Life in a dream
In the current European cinema, there are few directors of the type of François Ozon. Like hardly any other knows how the people born in 1967 to reinvent itself from film to film and to add well-known genres and forms of cinema always innovative and surprising. From the shrill farce Sitcom (1998) on the exuberant musical 8 Women (2002), of thoughtful films such as Under the Sand / sous le sable (2000), 5×2 (2004) and Time to Leave / Le Temps qui reste up to the erotically charged film goes swimming pool (2003) The amazing filmography of the man – but this list represents only a selection of the work dar. With his new film Angel – A life like a dream / The Real Life of Angel Deverell is treading new ozone now again ways and devotes himself – trained on models such as Douglas Sirk – the melodrama to historical background.
England at the end of the 19th Century: The young called Angelica Deverell (Romola Garai), Angel, grew up in the small town of Norley in modest circumstances. But the small world that was born into it, one suggestion for the girl, the fug of the province, real and intellectual narrowness and the meager income that is Angels mother (Jacqueline Tong) earned through their store, the limitations of their classmates and their Aunt Lotti (Janine Duvitski) – all this does not correspond at all with their vision of a good life. Angel begins to hineinzuträumen in better conditions and bring their fantasies on paper, but the fall in the severe climate Norleys poorly understood. In the young woman is so planted the seed of a world in which they will have even better. And she does all this in order to achieve this goal in reality. In her room, created her first novel entitled Lady Irania, which will eventually help her through the proper assessment of the publisher Théo (Sam Neill), a breakthrough. For Angels turgid romantic meets precisely the times and reached the hearts of readers. Henceforth it is uphill for the author, followed by book to book, and actually fulfill their dream of becoming rich and famous. Soon she runs in the best circles of the British capital. In a society learns Angel Nora (Lucy Russell) and her brother, the painter Esme (Michael Fassbender) know where they are desperately in love unconditionally, and whom she now sponsors. As a villa in front of the Angel in her youth was always a dream, is for sale, she buys the property with the name “Paradise House” and leads to a life of pomp and great emotions. With the outbreak of World War changed the life of a writer to success dramatically, failure to follow the professional and personal setbacks and defeats Angel has to recognize that she has lived far too long in a dream world …
Angel – A life like a dream / The Real Life of Angel Deverell is a reminder of the cinema as it previously, especially in times of a Douglas Sirk once was – beautiful decor, a lavish, larger than life emotions. One is reminded of the extremely artificial, difficult intolerable atmosphere of Kubrick’s last film Eyes Wide Shut, the exaltation of Sofia Coppola in Marie Antoinette, the experiments of the early Lars von Trier in Europe. In each scene, each setting so resonates with a lot of artificiality, that one might think of this story for a second that they are not themselves the product of a kitsch author of the stamp is an Angel Deverell. The film is based on one of Elizabeth Taylor (no, not the actress who became famous for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) in 1957 in which the author often being compared to Jane Austen as an equally sarcastic amused glance at the life of a colleague raises, the reality and fiction is no longer tell them apart, and (the act of their trashy novels) he has to live. Ozone has modified this narrative approach, because in his view, it was difficult to follow for two hours the fate of a woman in the cinema, which was so thoroughly unsympathetic as Angel Deverell. Instead of using mild mockery ozone follows the story of its protagonist with great empathy and also shows the extent to which dream and reality, fictional novel, actions and actual living condition and penetrate each other. This happens sometimes with enervating, as clearly exhibited artificiality – when, for example rear projections are made readily recognizable – and slips a few times the range of kitsch, but also ozone, thus unmasking the mechanisms for the operation of the cinema as well as film adaptations of Rosamunde Pilcher novels , or other trivial Home stories from tabloid newspapers. And not least, Ozon’s film reflects the dilemma and the great danger of every artist – the tightrope between an unstoppable imagination, from which he must draw and also the need to avoid getting lost in those dreams. This should not be forgotten, because the decor and the sumptuous costumes, the voluptuous music, and the great emotions can be all too easy to forget that ozone looking for all his enthusiasm for the smooth surface on the bottom of things.
Angel – A Life in a dream / The Real Life of Angel Deverell was supported by the Film Review Board Wiesbaden with the title “Excellent especially valuable.”
(Joachim Kurz)
Title: Angel – A Life in a dream Original Title: The Real Life of Angel Deverell Country of production: France, Britain, Belgium Year of production: 2006 Length: 134 (Min) of material: Concorde Film Distribution