Angel-A (2005) - film review

28 year-old con artist André lies so easily that he has even convinced himself he is the model citizen.  In reality, he is the type that would sell his grandmother for a packet of cigarettes.  After winning a Green Card in the lottery, he can’t stop boating that he is an American citizen, which is probably not a good thing at a time when (in the wake of the Iraq War) most French people regard all Americans as the spawn of Satan.  André is soon snatched out of his dream world when his creditors begin putting pressure on him to settle his debts.  He has a choice: either pay up or become mincemeat.  André knows that there is no way he can find the money so he decides to kill himself by jumping from a bridge into the Seine.  Just before he makes the plunge, a young woman throws herself into the river before his eyes.  Infuriated at this flagrant intrusion into his suicide, André goes in after the woman and saves her from drowning.  André cannot understand how such a beautiful young woman, whose name, by the way, is Angela, could want to kill herself.  She tells him that she now belongs to him, that she exists only to serve him.  Before he knows it, Angela has dealt with the hoodlums who were on André’s back and restored something of his self-confidence.  Yet, the young loner cannot help wondering who his new friend is.  He is not remotely convinced when she tells him that she is his guardian angel.  At least, not at first...

When it was first released in 2005, Angel-A offered two high profile comebacks for the price of one.  First and foremost, it marked Luc Besson’s long-awaited return to directing after a five year absence.  Since his last film, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999), Besson had been busy orchestrating a string of box office hits as a highly successful film producer.  These include the enormously popular Taxi and Transporter series and more substantial films such as Les Côtelettes (2003) and Banlieue 13 (2004).  With Angel-A, Besson defied the critics and demonstrated that he still has what it takes to make original crowd-pleasing cinema.

The other comeback was that of the film’s lead actor, Jamel Debbouze, who had been conspicuous by his absence in the years following his memorable appearance in Astérix et Obélix Mission Cléopâtre (2002).  Debbouze is first and foremost a comic, arguably one of France’s best at the present time, but in Angel-A he demonstrates that he also has an immense, as yet pretty well untapped, talent as an actor.  In what is effectively a two-handed film (the other hand being the former Danish model Rie Rasmussen, a great piece of casting), Debbouze shows that he can play moments of heart-rending poignancy almost as well as he can play comedy.  Perhaps one day someone will give him a straight leading role in a film and we will be able to see just how good he can be.

Angel-A is an engaging and innovative film but it clearly doesn’t match up to the excellence of some of Luc Besson’s previous directorial offerings.  It doesn’t have the haunting poetry of Le Grand bleu (1988), the energy of The Fifth Element (1997) or the intensity of Léon (1994), but it still makes a favourable impression.  Thierry Arbogast’s black-and-white cinematography is stunning (particularly in the panoramic shots of Paris) and gives the film an unreal quality that serves the story well.  The use of monochrome in feature films nowadays is always controversial but here it appears entirely justified, bringing a harsh film noir dimension to the main protagonist (who is a tongue-in-cheek variant of the classic noir anti-hero) and a dreamlike feel which makes some of the more fanciful plot developments easier to swallow.

As ever, Luc Besson plays to his strengths – creating a bold visual impact through imaginative design and camerwork – but is hampered by his Achilles heel, the writing.  This is by no means Besson’s worst script but its flaws are hard to ignore.  Some of the dialogue is truly cringe-worthy, most of the secondary characters are obvious clichés, and the imagination that is evident in the first half of the film seems to dissipate in the second.   In the hands of a less impressive director, such a mediocre script could at best have made a mediocre film.  But, as in other Luc Besson films, it is easy to forgive these script imperfections because the visuals are just so striking and effective.  Angela-A may not be faultless but it still manages to be a distinctive, well-crafted and enjoyable piece of cinema.  Fans of Jamel will not be disappointed.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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