The Dreamlife of Angels (1999)

Good movie but grossly overrated

Don't Believe the Hype

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Isa is a French girl who comes to Lille - with backpack - hunting for a man she bedded, who had invited her, perhaps, to stay. He isn't there so she gets a job in a sewing mill and meets Marie. Isa is lousy at sewing and loses her job, so Marie resigns in protest. Isa moves into an apartment with Marie, an apartment owned by a woman who has been in a car accident with her daughter. Marie is living there in the mean time.The girls become close friends, or at least they seem to. Isa is slower than Marie, and more gullible. Marie is tense and angry, and thinks that Isa is naive. They go out together and end up meeting some men who are bouncers at a nightclub. Marie beds one, while Isa stays uninvolved sexually, but remains friendly with them. The girls go to a Mall and play an annoying game with attractive men who pass by. They follow them and proposition them - playfully, but cynically. In the end they follow one guy outside as he gets in his SUV, and when he drives off Marie breaks his headlight. They run.Marie's mother arrives for a visit, and it is clear Marie despises her. She ends up giving her mother money. She hasn't seen her father in 4 years, and there is obviously something dark in their past. Perhaps incest? Perhaps rejection from a cold father? It is evident that Marie hates men. She sleeps with them but believes herself to be immune to their charms.Isa snoops into the private things in the apartment and comes across a diary written by the daughter, who is in a coma. Isa is entranced by it, and starts to live through it vicariously. She goes to the hospital and pretends to be a "relative" and visits the girl: Sandine. As she continues to do this we see that Isa wears her heart on her sleeve. Marie, on the other hand, hides hers in the pit of her being.Marie is caught shoplifting an expensive leather jacket. A passerby offers to pay for it in order to get her from being charged. It turns out he is the man whose headlight she smashed, but he doesn't recognize her. He owns the nightclub where her boyfriend is a bouncer. He takes her out for a drink, but far from being grateful to him she spews hatred at him. We now begin to see Marie as someone who attacks when she feels vulnerable. He is intrigued. He is rich, used to getting his way. He tries to kiss her and she attacks him physically and throws her drink at him. In spite of this he takes her home.Isa is amused that Marie has brought home the man whose car they vandalized, and thinks that Marie is taking the opportunity to spit in the face of the upper class.Instead Marie begins an affair with him. She shows up in a bar he owns and when one of his woman friends talks down to her she attacks her! He takes her to a hotel and has sex with her. She fights him off for awhile, but he becomes more aroused and eventually they have sex - like cats! When Isa realizes that Marie is involved she becomes despondent. Is she jealous? Perhaps! More likely she knows where it's going to end and she wants to save Marie from the pain. But Marie, as is her defensive style, attacks her verbally and then threatens her with a knife. Isa moves out. Now we know that Isa is the stable one and that Marie is quite likely a borderline personality, incapable of intimacy without demanding ownership! In the end they go their separate ways. Isa finds out that, quite possibly, her visits to Sandrine have helped her. In a telling scene at the hospital she approaches the door of Sandrine's room, after hearing the nurse tell her that she needs her continued support, but balks at going in, and turns her back and leaves. We see her in the streets laughing, clearly overjoyed at having accomplished something, but equally clearly incapable of following through with the commitment. Marie ends her life by jumping from her bedroom window just as Isa looks in on her for the last time.The movie sucks us in to these women's lives. We see how differently equipped they are for life as lower class single women. Isa, who initially seems to be dull witted, has a soul. Marie has an empty hole which is filled with venom, self hatred projected outwards, at the world she is estranged from. There is no preaching here, no heavy messages, just a profound telling of a tale of lives lived in quiet desperation.

This touching and compelling story is another one of those films which year after year drive me further and further away from Bollywood pot-boilers. In Europe we make films: in Hollywood they make spectacle turn-gate busters. This is a simple but sensitive story of two girls somewhat adrift in life, somewhat lost in the hopes for life, somewhat floating from day to day without much to go on or go by. But so refreshingly and carefully enacted and directed: Eric Zonca is indeed one of those directors who put great power into simple stories, so that the resulting film is captivating, beyond the story per se. Here is excellent European theatre, among the best. Mixing tragic moments with joyful experiences, mixing friendship in the deepest human values. "La Vie rêvée des anges" is a film for the intelligent and sensitive viewer who wants to see real life human drama at ground level.If you like this film, do not miss Fernando León de Aranoa's "Princesas" (2005)(qv).

This film provides just that-- a window into an aspect of humanity that leaves us feeling vulnerable. Rarely do we see a story that not only entertains and recounts events so naturally, but also reveals truths about ourselves that we're usually too cowardly to face. The delivery of the facts is so natural that we feel almost ashamed to be looking into the lives of the two main characters. Yet we remain glad we did it.The movie is NO chic-flic, and could lend any man a rare insight into the female psyche. We're strange creatures with strange strengths, and also unintelligible weaknesses.Erick Zoncka insists that he is not concerned with "formulating truths about the world or society", but only to make emotion felt, and to mirror "encounters with human beings". In no film would this be more clear. Yet it is so well done, that he does reveal truths. They are complex enough to remain untouched by theory, but they are here, in this film.

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.)