User reviews

It starts quite strangely for a movie about the life of a romantic novel writer in the early XX century Britain, with a wannabe Danny Elfman's music, an ugly pink opening, and an actress obviously too old for the part she plays. But, as the movie goes on, if the strangeness still remains, all this elements begin to make sense and create and original, and I think, never experimented on screen, world. ANGEL is indeed a really good surprise if you manage to accept and enter the inner world that the movie describes, and the kitsch atmosphere of Ozon's style (witch was for me unbearable in his previous movies, like "8 Femmes", but that absolutely fits the subject of this movie). When I learned that Ozon directed a movie in English about a young artist, I was waiting for a sort of kitsch version of ESTER KAHN (the wonderful movie another French director – Arnaud Despechin – made about a young lady in Britain in the early XX century), but I couldn't be more wrong : ANGEL is a sort of feminine (or Gay) version of Tim Burton's ED WOOD, describing how a strong imagination – no matter how bad it is – can completely recreates the world, and how you can fully lives in a fantasy universe, when you believe hard enough in your talent and your art .

The movie tells us the life of Angel (Ramola Garai, who has everything to become the new Ludivine Sagner for François Ozon), from her childhood, where she dreams, upstairs the family's grocery, of the fastidious and glamorous life of a famous writer, to her success in the house of her dreams : Paradise house, where she has everything she ever dreamed of when she was young. The originality of this movie is that everything is seen with Angel's eyes. And her eyes only see what her imagination tells them to see, for she doesn't live in reality, but always fills it with dreams, so that she can live as if she were one of her romantic heroine. Whatever awful and sad the word might be, it never touches Angel, for she always transforms it with her imagination the way she wants. And imagination, she has plenty... Of course, her world is a childish, puerile and kitsch world of a bad Barbara Cartland 's novel and the movie completely recreates it on screen, with all the artifices it supposes : from the colors – that explains the pink – to the situations : when she proposes Esme, the man she chooses to love, the rain suddenly stops when he says yes, and a rainbow appears : empirical reality doesn't exist here, for Angel is unable to see it. But, and here's the all interest of the movie, the spectator, on the other hand, is absolutely able to watch it.

This tension between the strong believing that Angel puts in her world, and the ridiculous that the spectator sometimes sees in it, is mostly tangible thought other character's eyes (like Charlotte Ramplin is the more judgmental, she's the first to condemn Angel's books, but mostly for personal reasons : she can't stand the pretentious and rude young lady with whom her husband is falling in love, or Esme, the untalented painter, who is also one of this ambiguous character, for he accepts his wife universe, but is unable to really find his place in this fictive world). And the movie constantly plays with this two degrees, witch brings humanity, cruelties and sadness to the shinny but unreal world it describes. That's also why this movie is so surprising : we never know exactly where we are : is this a dream, when will it stops, will reality goes after it in the end ? This constant instability regenerates the spectator interest for this movie, and keep it far from the classical costumed movie about the rise and fall of an English women writer it could have been.

That's also why this movie reminds me of Tim Burton's ED WOOD, for, beyond their differences, they both deal with the same thematic of the triumph of an artistic imagination over the world, and the fall that fallows this triumph, and they also share a melancholic tone, as well as real understanding and compassion for untalented but passionate artists.

Angel Deverell (Romola Garai) imagines herself to be a writer. Night after night she writes of her imaginative world. At school, she is ridiculed for her fantasies, and her mother (Jacqueline Tong) has no idea of her talent. A London publisher Theo (Sam Neill), publishes her first book despite her arrogance and his reservations. The novel is a bestseller. She writes another and another and another, and so on.

At the height of her fame, she meets the painter Esmé (Michael Fassbender), and is immediately stuck, even if he is even more arrogant that she is. And, sad to say, more untalented.

This is the key to this film. It is a satire of those stories of the period. There are only two serious people in the film. The rest are caricatures of popular characters and settings.

British writer Elizabeth Taylor's novel, based upon Marie Corelli, a long-forgotten English novelist of the 19th Century, was translated to the screen by François Ozon (Swimming Pool, 8 Women), who also directed. He certainly captured the ego Corelli was reputed to have.

The life she lived or the life she dreamed? That is the question of this film. There is no doubt that for a few brief moments, Angel was never in touch with reality. It makes for great satire.

I've added Angel in my watch list about a month ago, after studying -quite a few- of Romola Garai's and Michael Fassbender's performances. Some of the films i've watched with Garai were: Inside I'm Dancing (2004), Mary Bryant (2005), Atonement (2007) and The Other Man (2008). She was brilliant in all of them. So she was in this film.

This is a fiction story based on a novel/screenplay by Elizabeth Taylor. It's kind of a biography of a young writer (Angel) with a not wealthy background that manages to finally publish her rich -in imagination- novels. What do you think, passionate love wouldn't knock on her door when she starts being famous? This is where Fassbender's role (Esme) comes in. Another artist, an underestimated painter who doesn't feel confident enough about his work and who also keeps some skeletons in his closet that will -later in the film- (much later) finally be revealed. Fassbender is a great performer but he doesn't get to shine here. Sam Neil plays the part of the overwhelmed publisher and Lucy Russell does a great supporting work as Esme's sister.

As i'm still new in screen writing and film structure, i found myself a bit worried about the way this movie was unfolded. Everything seemed so magical and dreamy and the drama was almost out of the plot for much longer than i expected. It had to make a turn! And it did and it was sudden, maybe a bit frustrating at some point, but you'll have your turning point eventually.

Since i've realized that there where practically two acts in this film i recalled the atmosphere, the costumes, the music and the colors that went along with the change. In the beginning everything was so bright and cheerful, then all turned pale and gloomy to show the depression, which you can clearly notice even in the clothes of the protagonist. There where only a few outdoor special effects that looked really out of date and weird for a 2007 production. I laughed and quickly forgot about them.

In a nutshell, it was a decent film -with a small cast- describing the intense, disturbed and not very long life of a young female writer in the early 20s, but nothing more to get excited about.

A group of girls march in succession toward their daily lesson, both their step and their outfits similar in fashion, until one girl breaks from the mold and finds herself at the gates of paradise, forced to gaze from afar. The girl is Angel, the title character from French director, Francois Ozon's first venture into English-language film. Don't let the name fool you though; there is nothing remotely angelic about her. She is spoiled, loud and delusional – everything you want in a heroine you're supposed to root for and just the kind of person you want to see get everything they desire. Right?

Angel is a writer, not a very good writer but people love her. She refuses to live in the real world in favor of the perfect illusion she believes she has crafted for herself. It all raises many questions about success and talent, sanity and vanity, but no matter how wickedly she is played by Romola Garai, the woman is too wretched to inspire sympathy in the viewer and Ozon does nothing to help.

Ozon's past efforts range in form from ridiculous and satirical to contemplative and tragic. His transition into the realm of period drama is daring considering the smaller size of his previous works but he juggles the elements well. In fact, he balances back and forth between the elaborate costumes, grandiose sets and exaggerated performances so well that it all feels rather plain. Considering how allergic Angel was to the mundane, I don't think she would have been very pleased with this. And trust me, you wouldn't like her mad.

If I had approached this movie as a satire, perhaps it would have been more bearable. Or maybe not. It somewhat feels like a play on 40's-50's movie comedy, but set in the early 1900's. The script (and the acting for that matter) is so flawed, there is no need to even bother going over its flaws. Fassbender clearly lives in the 21st century and Romola is straight out of an overacted tragicomedy play from the 1800's, except she is behaving like a bratty teenager we see on Sweet 16. I hope she was doing it on purpose, otherwise there are no excuses for her annoyance. There is a fine line between funny and annoying. I had to force myself to finish watching this movie just because I am such a huge Fassbender fan. Him, along with Charlotte and Sam, what a waste of talent.

I'm a great admirer of Francois Ozon's French movies (Swimming Pool, Under the Sand, 8 Women) but this, his first foray into English language drama, is a stinker. Adapted from a book by Elizabeth Taylor about an Edwardian novelist whose life fails to live up to her romantic fantasies it is as ridiculous, clichéd and overwritten as any of the heroine's creations; hard to know if this is the fault of the source material or Ozon's adaptation (though he has been assisted by acclaimed playwright and translator Martin Crimp). You watch it in disbelief, unsure if you're meant to laugh or not, faintly hoping that this is a deliberate attempt at post-modern ironic detachment (but wondering what would be the point) and gradually realising that Ozon thinks he is Douglas Sirk and has completely embarrassed himself.

The actors look all at sea, particularly Romola Garai who can't give any charm to the unlikeable heroine, and Ozon adopts a stiff and old-fashioned style of film-making - complete with syrupy music and terrible back projections - which make the film look as it it was made in 1936 rather than 2006; I'd like to think this was a deliberate if unfortunate miscalculation but the consequence is that the finished product looks stilted and amateurish. Only Charlotte Rampling - Ozon's muse - almost saves the day, but her air of sardonic detachment probably says more about her feelings towards the film than about her character.

Angel Deverell (Romola Garai) is certain of her writing despite her humble station. Her widowed mother has a grocery store and sees her as an useless dreamer. Publisher Theo Gilbright (Sam Neill) accepts Angel's book Lady Irania and is surprised to find the author to be actually a woman. His wife Hermione (Charlotte Rampling) doesn't really like the brash self-obsessed ingénue. Lady Irania becomes a great success and Angel buys the local mansion Paradise. She hires admirer Nora (Lucy Russell) as her secretary and marries Nora's womanizer indebted artist brother Esmé (Michael Fassbender). When war breaks out, she is angry that Esmé joins up to fight ruining her perfect life.

Romola Garai is great at playing the annoyingly self-obsessed over-dramatic character. That's a double-edge sword. She's not particularly likable but she is fascinating. She's basically a bratty flamboyant teenager in a costume drama. The movie does kind of work in the same way her overwrought melodramatic novels work. That's a sort of poetry.

What a disappointment. It's hard to know what attracted Ozon to Elizabeth Taylor's fantastic source novel as his adaptation is misjudged on a number of levels. Although he slavishly sticks to Taylor's plot, Ozon has real problems with - or chooses to ignore - the very things that are at the heart of the novel. Taylor's ironic, often cruel wit is missing. Characters are softened in the way one would expect of Hollywood, but not of French cinema. He doesn't seem able to master Taylor's irony at all - the audience at last night's London Film Festival screening were very confused about where and when they should laugh. It was impossible to know what the director felt about the characters. Almost entirely missing was Taylor's exceptional portrait of class - one of the major themes of the novel. The film felt like a classic Europudding - rootless in an implausible world. There was very little sense of being in Edwardian Britain.

The film is overwrought and out of control. If I hadn't already read the novel, I would have been completely puzzled by what I was watching and how I was supposed to respond or feel.

Based on the novel by Elizabeth Taylor, this Francois Ozon directed movie was the closing film of the Berlin Film Festival last year, and while it played out like a biography of a fictional character, you can't help but to imagine how close it seemed to the flamboyance of the other Liz Taylor being infused into the titular character.

Movies based on biographies, such as Miss Potter with Rene Zellweger and La Vie En Rose with Marion Cotillard, seem to follow a formula of rags to riches, and basically living the dream that no one had imagined was possible. Naturally, being blessed with a talent and a gift helps too, and with Angel Deverell (Romola Garai), hers was a steely resolve of wanting to break out of her poverty cycle through her writing, an aspiring novelist with limited life experience, relying solely on her vivid imagination to paint literary marvels with her firm grasp of language, constructing sentences like a wordsmith many times her age.

What made her character compelling to watch and follow, is her living in a fantasy world she constructs for herself, which suits her perfectly as it provides for and fuels her imagination with romantic stories to enchant and endear herself to her readers. It shields her from her insecurities, but in doing so, she slowly isolates herself into her view of Paradise, and becomes a chronic liar, which I felt she's constantly aware of, but is ashamed to admit any stain in the perfect world.

Delivered in two distinct acts, things start to change when she meets the Howe-Nevisons. Nora (Lucy Russell), probably her #1 fan who simply worships the ground she treads on, and offers to be her personal assistant, and her brother Esme (Michael Fassbender from 300 who said they'll fight in the shade!), with whom Angel falls head over heels for. And this stifling relationship takes a toil on all parties involved, with shades of possible lesbianism played down in the film (though I'm unsure what became of it in the novel). While Angel had her break from Theo (Sam Neill) the publisher who believed in her, Esme the aspiring painter has none, besides Angel who would probably say Yes to anything he says. And his portrait of her probably was the highlight for me in the movie. If a portrait painter needs to, and can peer directly into your innermost soul and bring whatever qualities he sees in you onto the canvas, then Esme would have succeeded with his god-ugly picture of Angel, reinforces meaning of being beautiful on the outside. but ugly on the inside.

The special effects were quite badly done, and perhaps deliberately too, as it's made up of very obviously superimposed shots of backgrounds that no longer exist because of modernization. Other than that, the rest of the production values are high, and the costumes too which Angel decked herself in, are quite a sight to behold, especially when there's a call for a change in colours to reflect the mood of the story as it wore on.

But what made this movie very palatable, is how Romola Garai carried the role through the story. You can just about believe the very naiveness and devil may care attitude that her Angel brings, however always seemingly able to hide and bury her true feelings deep within herself, and being a master manipulator also helped loads. Like how Charlotte Rampling's character of the publisher's wife reflected, you just can't help but to pity Angel, despite her pomp, flamboyance and hypocrisy.

So if you're interesting in a movie that provides avenue for an intriguing study of a person putting on a very fake mask, then Angel, despite its title, will be the movie for you to examine human traits which are anything but angelic.

Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011) was a successful actress who won an Oscar twice. But stop! There was also a writer of the same name who is really good, but spent her whole life in the shadow of her namesake, who started her career as a child star in "National Velvet" (1944) shortly before the novel debut of the 20-year-old woman. What a story!

Fortunately, in 2007 France's directing genius Francois Ozon filmed "Angel", one of the best novels by Elizabeth Taylor (1912-1975) from the British Reading, which is loosely based on the life of the early best-selling author Marie Corelli (1855-1924 ) oriented. This "Angel" from the novel and film is an ambitious writer (played by Romola Garai) who can really get on the nerves of those around her with her exuberant imagination and strong desire for kitsch. A story like this is definitely not for everyone. Ozon delivers a colorful homage to the works of Douglas Sirk / Detlef Sierck and unabashedly pays homage to his role models "Gigi" (1958) and "Gone with the Wind" (1939). Other roles in this star-studded film shine: Sam Neill (Jurassic Park), Charlotte Rampling (The Night Porter), Lucy Russell (in "Toni Erdmann" (2016) the English friend who runs away in time at the nude party) and of course the 1977 im Beautiful Heidelberg-born and now two-time ACADEMY AWARD nominee Michael Fassbender in one of his earliest roles.

During her lifetime, the great writer Elizabeth Taylor was unfairly overlooked for the reasons mentioned above. Fortunately, in German-speaking countries, Dörlemann Verlag from Zurich is now ensuring that, in addition to "Angel", other of her novels such as "Blick auf den Hafen", "Versteckspiel" and "Mrs Palfrey im Claremont" find enthusiastic readers. If that's too strenuous for you, you can try watching Francois Ozon's film!

The source book was a satire on a truly dreadful author of the late 19th century, a sort of Barbara Cartland, but only more schlocky. If the intent was to have fun on this idea it was missed and badly; if it was taken at face value, it is a sign of incipient idiocy.

It plays the whole thing very straight and it seems as if no one saw that this is utter complete trash. Douglas Sirk used to take rubbish - real mediocre uneducated garbage - and make a thing with it as Fassbinder extolled him for doing. It looks as if Ozon has done a Fassbinder and taken real nonsense, which has become a joke cliché of romantic fiction and not seen that it had always been a joke; a wry in-joke on the reader, and on the original writer.

Why anyone ever signed up to do this is curious - apart form the money. Why it was financed is even more puzzling. No doubt people will watch this in 10 and 50 years and see something else altogether but none of it will do anything for the creative team behind this.

The classic, "Cold Comfort Farm" was a parody of the romantic rural fiction popular in the early 20th century and this work is a roman a clef of the same type of demotic garbage that is consumed in bulk.

Under no circumstances go anywhere near this and wipe all playback technologies that may have accessed it.

For me, this film is truly awful. It tells the story of an English woman who writes simplistic, kitschy, romantic novels - think Barbara Cartland, but set in the 1900s. Its prolific, eponymous heroine, the daughter of a provincial grocer, has her first book published while still at school; and goes on to achieve fame and fortune, before meeting her inevitable nemesis.

Had the film contained irony, humour, imaginative visuals, original character insights or surprising plot twists, it could have been watchable, perhaps even admirable. But Francois Ozon, the writer/director, has used little or none of these; and instead has employed the sort of fairy-story, linear plot line, cardboard characters, melodramatic action and over-decorated interiors as one imagines appear in Angel's books. (Fortunately, we are given little by way of examples of her writing.) Incidentally, though on a technical level the film is mostly competent, there is a laughably bad piece of back-projection - or whatever equivalent is used these days - near the beginning, when Angel is in a carriage riding through London.

Even with these defects, the film might still have worked if Ozon had made his main character in the slightest degree likable or intriguing; had she been, say, a naive dreamer, who relates guilelessly to those around her and to her adulatory readership. We could then have understood and forgiven her ignorance of the absurdity of her writing. But it is hard for us to sympathise with Angel when she starts off as a hateful, materialistic, selfish brat; remains so throughout her period of success and lionisation; and hardly changes even when fate turns against her.

It would be easy to blame some of the film's flaws on over-acting by its principal, Romola Garai, but I suspect she plays her part exactly as Ozon wanted. The male lead is Michael Fassbender as Esmé, a stereotypical, garret-dwelling, Bohemian artist, who is the one object of Angel's adoration (besides herself). Also on stage are Lucy Russell as Nora, Esmé's sister, who genuinely admires and loves Angel; Sam Neill as Angel's publisher, who incredibly agrees to print her first schoolgirl effort despite her refusal to alter even one word of it; and Charlotte Rampling as his wife who is understandably baffled by his abandonment of his critical faculty.

Unless you're really stuck for something to do, I recommend giving Angel a miss. Instead, for those who haven't seen it, the recent Miss Potter is a far more credible and engaging portrait of a turn of the century female writer.

My advice would be don't waste your time with this film.

Large chunks were clearly meant to be ironic but much was also meant to be more darkly realistic. The result was a wildly veering mish-mash of genres which the director failed to navigate successfully.

Overall, the film felt like a mix between a 1940s melodrama and a 1970s made-for-TV two-part series, with a loathsome central character.

Two people in our group of 20 loved the film, so it must have something going for it. The rest of us were desperate for it to be over from about 20 minutes in. At one point, the main character gets sick, and from behind me and beside me I heard simultaneous mutters of "please die" and "thank god". That was exactly how I felt.

I am sure the film was making all kinds of comments about art, literature, characterization etc etc but it all went sailing over my head. Driving home, I said as much to my flatmate, and he paraphrased Bill Hicks to me: "The film was bad. Don't get suckered into believing it actually saying something complex and clever. It was bad. Leave it at that and walk away".

I really love this movie and keep seeing it again and again, as it reminds me very much of (as Ozon intended) the 1930's-40's epic melodramas and the role of Angel Deverell was intended to be like Vivien Leigh in "Gone with the wind". Even before I had read that I thought about this all the time.It's very rare to find nowadays a movie with modern-days technical perfection (brilliant colours and costumes and sound)but a 1940's style. Everything is over the top, unbelievable but for me going to a movie means suspension of disbelief, do we need a film to be like reality? I don't go to cinema to see reality, but to be taken to a different world, one of romance and it hardly gets more romantic than this. Read the interviews at www.francois-ozon.com and you will understand it all a lot better. This movie does not deserve the criticism it gets here as that's comparing apples with oranges. This movie is PERFECT as it is made almost flawlessly and in a (for costume movie lovers) very lavish way, a great joy to watch and listen to, not to mention a very energetic and passionate Romola Garai, who I will love to see also in "Atonement". A nice touch, in line with the 1940's style, is that trips to London, Venice, Greece, Egypt are made the way they did in those days, not on location but a filmed background. Nothing is very realistic in this movie, but it shows what dreams are made of and I thank the director and actors highly for many hours of fantastic entertainment. In it's genre it's just as good as Lord of the Rings, which also did not have to be real to be wonderful, did it?

Well, easily the worst film I've seen this year, but then I suppose it's only March. Not at all sure what they were trying to do with this - given that it's the story of a Barbara Cartland style writer of romantic novels, perhaps they felt compelled to address it in the same overly melodramatic style. Frankly for about two hours I was fairly convinced that it must have been a dream sequence. I can't fault the performances, but the script was just so pedestrian they didn't have anywhere to go. The main character is imaginative to the extent that it actually becomes difficult to determine what she really believes, when she is consciously imagining and when she is simply deluded. It's never really resolved what the male lead's true feelings for her are, and the other characters are merely one-dimensional support.

Eminently missable.

Hmmmm... if the reviews and comments I've seen are any indication, melodrama is as divisive as ever. I found Ozon's approach admirable: intelligent and objective but not satirically distanced, like Fassbinder without the cruelty. It seems clear to me that he is showing us not a realistic depiction of Angel's life but a version colored by her imagination. The intention is not to mock her but to allow us to share her experience, and to make up our own minds about the value of her fantasies. The closest to an authorial statement comes from the character least sympathetic to Angel: Charlotte Rampling as the publisher's wife comments that in spite of Angel's lack of talent or self-knowledge, she has to admire her drive to succeed. Of course we're not compelled to agree, but it strikes me as a fair assessment.

The reactions to this movie remind me of the uncomprehending dismissal of Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, another story of a shallow, self-involved woman that insists on looking through her eyes. This kind of scrupulous generosity is in line with a tradition going back to Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and both directors have the stylistic confidence to carry it off. It may just be that they don't have the critics they deserve.

I went to see "Angel" only because I'm a fan of Francois Ozon's films, which are often weird, quirky, with plot twists.

But alas, I had to sit through 2 hours of pure, corny melodrama, so corny that you wonder whether it isn't a joke! But then, it continues, and you realize that the bad acting, the bad sets, and stereotypical, predictable storyline are serious!! No twists, no making fun, just straight drivel.

Why an intelligent film-maker like Ozon would make such a bad, bland, boring film is beyond me.

Romola Garai's acting style is horribly overdone. She was a lot better in Scoop. In Angel, she repeatedly gazes out into the proverbial distance, flings herself on beds when upset, and generally acts so insolent you want to slap her (not for her character's being insolent, but for bad acting).

Fassbender's acting is only slightly better, but he is obviously constrained by the painfully predictable melodramatic storyline.

Sam Neill and Charlotte Rampling shine by their understated, correctly-dosed performances. But then you wonder why their talent is being wasted in such a film !

Their performance and the costumes worn by Angel are really the only interesting things in the film....