A Major Disappointment

It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

When I went to see the film Up In The Air, the audience was mostly middle aged people. It was a film meant to be enjoyed by people who had lived a little and understand what life is like. I'm also going to a 30th year high school reunion and will see a cross section of people from my youth who made difference choices throughout their lives.So this film is best enjoyed (and in a way, it is enjoyable) by those who have lived life and understand how painful it can be. There are two sets of protagonists: The working class girls out on their own struggling to survive. Both are effectively homeless. One girl is basically crashing at a relative's apartment whose an accident victim. The other girl is there only because of a quick friendship. They are both living on borrowed time and need to find a place to live. Some of us have been there. I have. It was a brief period in my life that was not pleasant but helps me to appreciate what I have now. Sometimes I close my eyes in my bed and am so thankful to have a place to sleep and someone who loves me next to me. I wonder that if I hadn't gone through that, would I appreciate life in the same way?Although they aren't present on screen, the real "angels" of the film are the poor accident victim whose apartment the girls are crashing in and her daughter who survived the accident and is in a coma. They are middle class women who had good lives but are now in tragedy. This film is about how the different angels survive and the choices they make. The girls get boyfriends to help them get by and soul crushing menial jobs. This is "office space" for women but without obvious humor. Strangely, I think I appreciated this more than my wife. For my wife, it's depressing but for me it was reaffirming to see things from a different perspective.

Few prosaic settings could arouse better the "pity" for helpless mortals that Aristotle called the essence of the tragic spectacle. The film is exquisitely composed, in the sordid type of setting that too many urban youths, unhelped by parents, are faced with. The Director's artistic reticence, and the unbroken silences where we are moved to share the mental processes, and anguish, of the two girls, cause this film to provoke that "pitiful" purification which is enriching for the spectator, and could be invaluable for adolescents on the verge of... "life" in our time.Young men who are able to empathise with the tragic situations that Isabelle and Marie are in should form a richer sympathy for the lives of girls that they encounter.

For a long time, French cinema had the bias to choose to overlook the marginalized, the social misfits who have trouble to struggle and to fit in a society. In the nineties, some French filmmakers began to get interested in these categories of ill-fated ones as Erick Zonca's tale bears witness. His chronicle of these two friends facing the harsh economic, social realities together was bestowed with prizes in 1998, 1999, especially at the Cannes festival where it was one of the jury's favorites. French public and press specialized in cinema gave it an ovation and the film enjoys a favorable reputation abroad, rather rightly so.The director's forte is to showcase and to assess the persona of his two young interprets. At first sight, they're a mismatched pair that everything opposes and brings together. Isabelle (Elodie Bouchez): a 20 year-old young woman who brims with energy and generosity, ready to accept any job not to get bogged down in poverty including to distribute advertising leaflets on roller skates dressed in "sandwich-woman". Beside her, Marie (Natacha Régnier), bilious, mercurial dissimilar to her sidekick (to put it mildly). Apart from the liking she feels for Isabelle and their friendship is a touch of light in this drab city, she's her complete antipode. She can't put up with her distressing condition, she's rather in bad terms with her mother. She even shows total egocentricity because she doesn't even go to a lot of trouble to visit her cousin Sandrine in a coma and whose mother died shortly after wards. A consequence to her profound discontentment and to her inability to come to terms with her social condition. Maybe an exit to this life for her would be to live with Chris, a rich kid with a more than comfortable living standards. She has a crush on him but the latter treats her like a ghostly girl.Erick Zonca's chronicle is composed of two parts. The first half is nearly faultless and a prime one from every angle. The director tries to capture short-term moments of bliss when the two friends are together and there's a communicative "feel-good" vibe. Zonca also deftly eschews what could make caricatured some characters like the ruffian-like bouncers. The second part veers to a doom-laden turn which even if it serves the title of the film and Marie also makes it formulaic. From the moment when Marie is enamored of Chris, the audience has to expect the inevitable. Marie's love for Chris jeopardizes her friendship with Isabelle who is very aware that Marie's lover considers her as a casual lover and leads her up the garden path. So, almost adamant feuds break out between Isa and Marie who don't manage to calmly communicate face to face. Zonca steers his film according to what the audience expects and the poise that the film created in the first half is damaged and not well dovetailed as a whole. The interest tends to dwindle and Mr Zonca, I would have liked more unexpected, less easiness but fortunately the communicative vitality, the acting full of spontaneity of the two main actresses largely stop you from dismissing this piece of work.I don't want to be a major spoiler and pour out the end. I will just say that it encompasses an upbeat, placating whiff thanks to a song discerningly chosen. "La Vie Rêvée Des Anges" is worth a watch thanks essentially to the two actresses whose performances boosted their careers. Natacha Régnier was venturesome to agree to hold difficult or trying roles later as in François Ozon's disquieting "les Amants Criminels" (1999).

THE DREAMLIFE OF ANGELS (3 outta 5 stars)Quirky French comedy-drama about two young single girls who strike up a friendship and share the task of apartment-sitting for another girl who is laying comatose in a hospital. Isa is the independent but sensitive girl who goes to visit the comatose girl... becoming attached to her while reading her journals. Marie finds her comfort in the company of men... she falls for a handsome but no-good young womanizer, but dumps the fat, loyal musician who loves her. Very good character study in the French tradition of Eric Rohmer and Francois Truffaut. (If you admire the work of those two French auteurs then this movie is for you. If not, then maybe you'll want to pass.)