Angel

Synopsis: Young Angel Deverell (Romola Garai) realizes her dreams to become one of the world’s famous writers, but finds a nightmare too. [François Ozon, 2007, UK/Belgium/France, rating: M, running time: 114 minutes]

Angel begins with a thoroughly unlikeable ‘heroine’ and an overpowering score and visual flourishes that brings to mind the worst of Disneyfication. Slowly, it reveals itself as a sharply satirical, sensual exploration of the melodrama. It’s a seductive experience, as François Ozon develops his trademarks and finds a natural place for his sometimes misplaced sense of kitsch.

The film features Ozon’s old and new muses, the impressive Charlotte Rampling in a somewhat token appearance and the enchanting Romola Garai (Amazing Grace) as Angel Deverell. As music floods the opening scenes we see Angel in her final year of high school, thoroughly conceited and domineering, convinced she is writing the greatest romance of all time. Against all odds, she does produce a series of incredibly popular works under the patient administration of her literary agent (Sam Neill) and the skeptical eye of his wife (Rampling), despite having no real experience of life or even of other writers on which to draw. As her dreams become real and she meets the love of her life Esmé (Michael Fassbender), her life begins to spiral down.

This fabulously realised story is based on British writer Elizabeth Taylor’s 1957 book of the same name. Taylor was said to be inspired by the real eccentricities of 19th century romance novelists such as Marie Corelli, Ouida or Ethel M. Dell. Like Ouida, Angel adorns herself in overstated costumes and commands influential audiences of soldiers, politicians and artists, all the while fancying herself as terribly influential. Like Corelli, Angel has an intriguing relationship with a live-in female companion (Lucy Russell as Nora) that is skilfully rendered in the film. Like Dell, Angel’s racy books are thoroughly disparaged by the critics but adored, at least for a time, by the public.

Romela Garai is an incredible performer as her character moves from alienating her audience to partially seducing them, although it is true that some will inevitably just remain alienated. She takes on the larger-than-life character of Angel effortlessly, expressively. Her face is one that romance writers imagine, but directors seldom capture, where faces can be clouded, eyes can flash or twinkle, smiles break hearts, roguish looks flitter, beauty comes and goes with a mood.

The overall result is disconcertingly evocative, with a twist, of the great American melodramas of the 30s and 40s. But it also brings to mind, at least to mine, a very French type of philosophy and I wonder whether Ozon is a fan of his countryman Baudrillard. For Baudrillard, I think, might have seen this film as an example of how the hyperreal simulacra overpowers and replaces the original. In other words, Angel is so grand, so exaggerated visually and emotionally, that memories of the ‘real’ melodramas that inspire it seem thoroughly insipid.

It’s an emotional, funny, tragic roller-coaster that confounds expectations and reminds us that this is the kind of thing cinema is all about.

4 flims