Wonderful character development!

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

This is an artsy flick made in a typical French – that is, sluggish – style. If you are in for anything resembling a horror movie, or simply a structured and reasonable movie, you'll hate this crap from the depths of your soul. However, if you are interested in modern arts – that is, mental masturbation – you might be gripped by the beautiful cinematography, the suggestive music, the hazy symbolism and the plot's patent absurdity.After some effort at piecing the puzzle, you'll unveil the dull, repulsive humanist ideology conveyed by the director in the form of a condemnation of both Nazi human experimenting and French vilification of the bastard children fathered by German occupants after the second world war.

I just finished watching this and after reading some of the brutal reviews and message board comments, I felt that I really should write a 'brief' review.First off, when all was said and done I didn't really find the film ultimately that satisfying; but, I think I am objective enough to say that mainly it is due to my personal taste and NOT because it is a bad film. I really wish people would be a little more fair when writing about these movies and separate the fact that THEY did not like it with whether or not it indeed was a bad film.Overall I truly felt that the director worked his @$$ off in this film and put his heart and soul into it. Also, THIS WAS HIS VERY FIRST MOVIE! So, c'mon, compared to the mountain of drivel that passes for Horror these days, graded fairly and comparatively, it was very well made. Very nice cinematography and direction as far as planning out every move meticulously and blending the lighting, sound, stormy atmosphere, etc. He also elicited competent performances from his actors too. BUT... for me personally anyway, here is the clincher... The pacing was WAAAAAAAAY off and the buildup WAY to long and the truly effective bits and visuals WAY too spare and subtle. If he had tightened up the pacing just a little and (I KNOW this next bit is gonna sound REAL Hollywood) livened up the visual scares a little, and would have given us much more visceral Gothic imagery and / or more startling clues (I mean COME ON, just one vague file folder and just about NOTHING else!???) Basically I feel that to make the film FAR more effective he needed to add some SUBSTANTIAL elements to drive it a bit more. I DON'T mean shallow jump scares, etc. (although a few more would have helped a little) Just look at THE master of this kind of film, Guillermo Del Torro. Now, that guy is very subtle too, BUT, and it is a VERY BIG BUT like Mariah Carrey's, he knows how to pace a film and ratchet up TRUE suspense and eerie atmosphere. I honestly think this director here has some excellent insight and quality to his film making, BUT I think he dwelt WAY too much on the drama between the ladies instead of building a better story. It was so melodramatic at so many points I was really thinking that a woman had directed it (NOT meaning at all to be unkind to women directors, etc., but merely that women directors USUALLY tell stories from a much more emotional and dramatic perspective then men do) So, the bottom line is, IF you have the time to kill and you are very, Very, VERY patient, you will see some very good technical film making; but, don't expect TOO much of a punch from the story itself. BTW, I really liked the ending; now THAT is exactly the kind of thing he needed much more of! He just needed a bit more in the way of disturbing imagery, subtle but more evocative of the atmosphere a film like this should have.

This is a film that made me question the existence of IMDb user comments. Seeing that it was the same director as Martyrs I decided to seek this film out, but then considered not bothering when I saw how generally bad the reviews here and elsewhere were. I'm really glad I ignored them and did watch it in the end.The problem with House of Voices is that it asks the audience to do a bit of the work. The story and the meaning behind it are not immediately obvious, there is an element of the film that is open to interpretation. It requires a bit of patience and an audience willing to think about what they're watching. For some people, the majority it seems, this clearly drains any potential enjoyment from the film. For me, and for a few others who have posted reviews here, it's not a problem at all, it's what makes the film so good.Aside from that there is a lot more to recommend here. The film looks beautiful, the performances are fantastic and there are some very effective scares generated with the help of a suitably creepy atmosphere. It is also truly unpredictable at times - something often missing from the modern horror film.Overall this is a bold, well-produced and interesting film that should be seen by anyone bored of films made to a formula.

For the life of me, I cannot understand the fierce and almost resentful nature of many of the opinions given here. I was fully prepared to see another one of those over-blown affairs that put style over substance and usually bore me to bits after 15 minutes or so of their „Amélie"-type smugness and undeserved self-confidence. In fact. SAINT ANGE is a very careful, very sensitive story of a young woman who struggles with her feelings about her impending motherhood. The ending made perfect sense to me, whether read as a ghost story of sorts or a paranoid fantasy. The actresses are uniformly excellent, particularly Virginie Ledoyen and Lou Doillon, as is Catriona MacColl, who you might still remember from those colorful Fulci extravaganzas from the early eighties. The splendid photography makes good use of the grey and cold blue colours of the orphanage, which is embedded in green and brown tones – Mother Nature. The fantasy ending also introduces a clinical white for good measure. In view of the many cinematic exercises of today that talk their subtexts to death, SAINT ANGE uses a formal elegance that is breath-taking. Actually, I didn't find one single frame that was superfluous. In a way, the film also shares several themes with Laugier's well-received and harrowing MARTYRS, as it is basically another – albeit more tender – tale of a bruised young woman under dire circumstances. The ending of MARTYRS can also be read as a paranoid fantasy, with traces of hope hidden in a complex framework of depressing human depravity. No, I liked SAINT ANGE a lot. And, by the way, Joe Lo Duca – who started with Sam Raimi's THE EVIL DEAD – delivered a haunting and memorable music score. An excellent movie.