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Sadly Over-hyped

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Another in a long string of French films I've watched lately. It has all the hallmarks of a French flick. Lots of character development, thread bare plot. The film has two dynamic, broken people as the protagonists. This movie is like a Hemmingway novel, painful, but totally justified by the ending.Marie, played by Natatchia Regnier, is a lonely soul who falls in love with someone out of her league. She is a tad off, prone to violence, and unable to control her anger at times. She is so obviously used by her lover, that even she recognizes it. Their first date is him inviting her to take a walk in town, but instead taking her to a hotel room. She is reluctant, and disappointed, but cannot resist him.Isa, played by Elodie Bouchez, is the pixie like good girl of the film. She and Marie live together in a house that belongs to a mother and daughter who were seriously injured in a car accident. The daughter is in a coma. Isa goes regularly to visit her in the hospital. She forms a sort of relationship with her by reading her diary. Isa's morality contrasts so much with Marie that it makes Marie's deterioration that much more dramatic.

Yes, the acting is superb, both the leads: the footloose, free-spirit Isa and the angry and erratic Marie. Also the supporting cast: the fat-boy bouncer and the rich-boy cad.What's available to young women cast out of the nest? How does one survive the winters as a homeless person in the northern France? Mind-numbing factory work is available. But where to live, and how to find the community that homo sapiens need to be mentally healthy? We learn what it takes to survive. Isa has great resources; she's an extrovert and has a genuine concern for others. She finds community with a most unlikely person. Poor Marie, wanly beautiful, is withdrawn and suspicious; one must intrude forcibly to get beyond her defenses. And yet she's careless. So faced with the same chances, one woman finds psychic sustenance while the other stumbles into despair.

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).

French movies are always different from any other cinema. They don't look like the average Hollywood production, but even though they are European, they can't really be compared to other European movies either, except for the English perhaps. The style of the French and English cinema aren't the same, but the subjects often are. Most of the time you'll get the story of people who have a hard time making the best of their lives, who live in poverty or bad conditions,... You'll not really find that as much in other countries like for instance Denmark, Spain, Italy,... in Asia or the USA."La Vie rêvée des anges" or "The Dreamlife of Angels", as it is called in English, tells the story of two young women, Marie and Isabelle, who meet each other in a sweatshop, where they have to operate sewing machines. Marie is apartment-sitting for a mother and her daughter who are in a hospital and in a coma after they had a terrible accident. Isabelle has been living with her backpack on her back, not knowing where she will end up the next day and sometimes selling handmade cards on street corners to earn a little money. Both have a difficult life and that's perhaps the only thing that really keeps both girls together. They find joy and adventure in one another's company, but sometimes also have incredible fights because their worlds are too far away from each other...If you are looking for a movie that will leave you with a good feeling after you've seen it, than you better start looking for another one. This film has a heavy subject and especially the ending will make you swallow a couple of times. I'm not going to tell you what that ending exactly is, but in my opinion it was the strongest part of the movie and one of the toughest, but also most touching endings I've seen in a movie in recent times. For me personally the rest of the story was certainly worth watching, but not always very original. I've seen it in more movies, but that doesn't mean of course that it can't be any good.The acting certainly is nice. The two leading actresses didn't get a Golden Palm in Cannes for nothing for this movie and I can understand perfectly why the jury decided to give Élodie Bouchez as well as Natacha Régnier a reward. It's impossible to say that the one was so much better than the other, both gave away a strong performance.As a conclusion I want to say that if you are looking for a feel-good movie, this certainly isn't what you are looking for, but if you are looking for a movie with a good subject and some strong acting than you might give it a try. Despite the fact that the story isn't the most original one ever, the movie stands firm on its feet and that's why I give it a 7/10.