Saint Ange (2004) - film review

At the end of the 1950s, the Saint Ange orphanage is about to close down after the tragic death of one of its child residents.  Anna, a solitary young woman, arrives to help with the cleaning of the building and is immediately assailed by strange imaginings, as if the spirits of dead children were trying to speak to her.   Anna is surprised to find another woman of her age, Judith, in one of the upstairs bedrooms.  It is apparent that Judith is suffering from severe mental derangement, but Anna develops an instant rapport with her.  Something is clearly wrong, but will Anna resolve the mystery, or will she end up like Judith, or worse...?

Saint Ange, the first full-length film from Pascal Laugier, is one of French cinema’s surprisingly rare excursions into the fantasy-horror genre.  Initially at least, it promises to be a worthy example of the genre – a seductive melange of the classic French film Les Disparus de Saint-Agil (1938) and Stephen King’s novel The Shining.  Unfortunately, after an intriguing beginning, where the everyday normality of a young woman’s experiences begin to meld with a nightmarish fantasy, it quickly starts to run out of steam.  The narrative fails to develop, we lose sight of what is real and what is imaginary, and the film becomes a messy exercise in artistic self-indulgence.

Whilst most of the cast appear hampered by a mediocre screenplay, Virginie Ledoyen salvages something with her intense and darkly introspective performance, which conveys a sense of mounting horror, even if the source of this horror is, to the spectator, annoyingly opaque and abstract.  It’s a shame that the film’s better points are undermined by its failings - a lack of narrative cohesion, a tendency for artistic excess for the sake of it, and one the most excruciating soundtracks imaginable.  If you watch this film, it’s as well to have a pair of earplugs handy...

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