Edwardian Camp

Angel, François Ozon's first English language feature, is, if nothing else, a particularly odd film. At least that was the shared reaction between Greencine's David Hudson and me following the early morning press screening at the Berlinale. It also happens to be Ozon's most audacious work since 1998's Sitcom, though it appears the joke was lost on some. Based on the 1957 novel by Elizabeth Taylor, Angel opens with the fifteen year-old Angelica Deverell (the fearless Romola Garai) standing at the gates of Paradise, the stately manor near her home town of Norley that she dreams of one day owning. The daughter of a grocer, Angel is a precocious youngster who spends her days and nights locked in her tiny room churning out dreamy romantic fiction about places and experiences that exist only in her overly-active imagination. Her purple prose ("into the vast vacuity of the empyrean") leaves her mother perplexed and her teachers launching accusations of plagiarism. Fed up with the narrow-minded in Norley, Angel drops out of school and decides she will become a famous author. Enter Theo Gilbright (Sam Neil, doing his best James Mason), a London publisher who is the key to her success, though his wife Hermione (Ozon staple Charlotte Rampling) is both contemptuous and a bit jealous over the pale teen firecracker. Angel's second-rate potboilers (with titles such as On Velvet Banks and Butterflies Never Die) are immensely popular with the masses, and she soon finds herself drenched in the type of wealth she always dreamed of. Like many of today's young starlets, Angel's enormous success arrives before she's had a chance to live, resulting in her making a series of poor choices, both financially and romantically. (I couldn't help but find parallels to a certain recently bald pop star now doing time in a pricey rehab center.) Her relationship with a moody, somewhat-shady artist (Michael Fassbender) has tragedy written all over it, due, in part, to Angel's (mis)conceptions of love and romance, which stem from the twaddle she invents in her novels. Her slow downward spiral over several decades (which comes as no surprise) is the stuff of supreme melodrama. Like Todd Haynes and Pedro Almodovar before him, Angel finds Ozon paying tribute to the Hollywood of yore, and in the grandest style possible. From his use of rear-projection and cheesy two-dimensional backdrops to the overly-dramatic (and overly-delivered) line readings that are followed by a Max Steiner-esque swell of strings, there are references to just about every master of the Hollywood weepie, and it's not difficult to identify nods to Mervyn LeRoy, Victor Flemming, Douglas Sirk, etc. Though the camp factor is high – even more so than in his musical mystery 8 Women -- Ozon transforms Taylor's novel (itself a satire) to the big screen without a hint of irony. It is possible to read the film as straight melodrama (as the woman next to me did, going through at least four tissues), but to do so is to miss out on the fun. Ozon's approach is slightly meta – recounting the life of Angel Deverell as if it was lifted from the pages of one of her superficial novels. The artifice Ozon employs, in everything from the film's look, dialog, and performances, is entirely intentional; entirely appropriate for a woman who lived her life as if in a fairytale. (Angel believes she can end WWI by simply tossing pacifist themes into her novels.) The few negative reviews I came across were consistent in that they all took the film at face value, judging Angel as if it was a Merchant-Ivory production. Were Ozon's intentions not clear enough? Is a healthy familiarity with his oeuvre a prerequisite to appreciating its charms? I'm not sure. Regardless, Angel is a remarkable achievement from one of Europe's most consistently interesting (and continually evolving) directors.

Comments

[Hatch]

Huh? Wasn't Swimming Pool Ozon's first English-language feature?

[Filmbrain]

Well, it does have English in it, but also a fair amount of French.

Perhaps I should have said first full English language feature/production.

[colinr0380]

I guess if we are being particularly pedantic about it, we could also say that Charlotte Rampling speaks English to her students in Under The Sand too, but that of course was primarily French language.

I think it is important to mention that it was the first full English language feature Ozon has made, since there the different language has to carry the themes of the film, while in something like Under The Sand, English is used to add an extra colour and doesn't impact the major scenes.