I watched Francois Ozon's "Angel" (2007) this weekend and pretty much loved it. As Victor Morton wrote: "A sort of female bildungsroman about a teenage dreamer who becomes a writer of cheap romances and then Britain’s biggest literary star, ANGEL isn’t in any way a parody or a pastiche or a travesty of the 30s/40s woman’s picture. It is simply an example of it, a re-creation of it— outdated conventions and all (complaining about the obvious rear-projection, as does the lead review on the IMDb as I write this, utterly misses the point)... you can imagine MGM of the 30s putting out this movie, with Norma Shearer or Joan Crawford or Greer Garson in the lead..."
Exactly. This film is everything films like "Far From Heaven" and "The Good German" wish they could be. It's a modern update of an older genre that manages to have the more "adult" content (i.e.: sex scenes) mix perfectly with the older Bette Davis-type woman's melodrama style. Romola Garai continues to be one of my favorite young British actresses. She's been wonderful in almost everything I've seen -- "I Capture the Castle," "Atonement," and now "Angel" (the less said about "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights" the better) -- and I wish she had a higher profile. Make more movies, Romola!
