"The Dreamlife of Angels" (La Vie Revee Des Anges)
is an honest, unsanitized examination of friendship and the obligations people have towards one another. It's beautifully played, unflinching and full of heart.
First-time director Erick Zonca presents a dead-on portrait of two working-class girls, Isa and Marie, in the mundane French city of Lille. Isa (Elodie Bouchez)
is a rough-around-the-edges drifter with a winning grin making her way through life by following her instincts. She encounters the more ethereal and withdrawn Marie (Natacha Regnier) when searching for work.
The story is deceptively simple: two
young women brought together by chance and how their different natures shape their lives. Zonca captures the impulsive, scattershot nature of young women making their way as best they can,
fleshing out character philosophies in apparently casual scenes of normal life (Isa and the rollerskating job, Marie's mall adventure). This film is modest in scope and
execution but extremely powerful in its natural depiction of serious life issues: compassion for others, death, loyalty and free will. It's reminiscent of the brilliant and challenging
"Breaking the Waves" in its acute awareness of psychological differences between people, its meditation on the nature of faith and love, drabbed-down look and cinema verite camera work.
Bouchez delivers a gutsy, warm performance as Isa. Tart and ballsy, she asks for no favors from anyone and engineers both a near-miraculous effect on a comatose girl and, perhaps,
contributes to Marie's shocking fate. Bouchez's expressive features convey Isa's changing feelings and shifting moods with a raw, unpolished eloquence ideally suited to her character.
Regnier has a tougher job. Her Marie is caustic, cynical yet a desperate romantic. She expresses the character's hardened manner and craving for a better life in an emotionally
complex and multi-layered performance. Surly Marie is always on the edge of violence, willing to start a fight at the drop of a hat, yet caring enough to help a stranger. Her fate is
obvious to everyone except herself, and the inevitability of her choices make the film that much more powerful. Zonca wisely doesn't shrink away from the bitterness of a limited life (Marie
coldly dismissing her lover, her anguished face at Chris' betrayal). His film has both the acrid taste of failure and lyrical moments of haunting grace (Isa begins writing in the diary, her
weeping in the tunnel).
The director had both actresses live together during the shoot, and his foresight shows in the natural flow and unselfconsciousness between the two. At times
it's hard to remember this is a film and not a documentary, especially during the apartment scenes. The two leads turn in performances as powerful as the work done in Mike Leigh's "Secrets
and Lies." These girls are as real as your neighbors, bereft of any glamour, struggling to understand themselves and the world. A lot of work went into achieving this artless effect
that adds a realistic, gritty dimension to this sensitive film.
Zonca and his two fine actresses find the sublime and poetic, and the mysteries of community and love, in the scrappy world
of hand-to-mouth living. Perceptive and thought-provoking, "The Dreamlife of Angels" deserves all the accolades heaped upon this intimate, revealing character study, at once delicate
as a pastel portrait but packing the wallop of a punch to the gut. Won't lose much in renting. Highly recommended |
