Toronto: 'Angel'

Francois Ozon's new film is an adaptation of the best of many excellent books by the late British novelist Elizabeth Taylor (who had the singular misfortune of sharing a name with one of the supporting players of the movie version of The Flintstones). Angel is a sui generis book, even considered within the Taylor oeuvre. It's the story of a willful, ignorant, generally awful lower-class girl, nicknamed Angel, whose practically demented imagination and compulsive work ethic transforms her into a wildly popular and rich romance novelist at the turn of the 19th century. Taylor chronicles Angel's life—her pissy little thoughts, her indefatigble vulgarity, her deluded love, and much more—with a dry, almost horrfied, and completely literary irony for which there is no practical equivalent in film grammar. Ozon, master parodist and pastiche-maker, understands this perfectly; in fact, this understanding is probably the raison d'etre for the film. His Angel chooses to be an often hilarious parody of the romantic period literary biography film subgenre, a devastating rejoinder to the likes of, say, Becoming Jane and Mrs. Potter. The super-sugary, florid score by Phillipe Rombi (who must be a very brave man), the use of deliberately poor rear-projection, the profusion of kitsch effects during "big" scenes—the marriage proposal in the film, set around some hideous faux-Greek columns and featuring a thunderstorm AND a rainbow, is particularly remarkable—all serve Ozon's wicked but ultimately wise vision. For, like Taylor's novel, this is not really a condescension-fest; it's a deeply sad story about both the joys and tragedies of insufficient self-knowledge. Angel's tragedy goes far beyond, and is far knottier and upsetting than, the usual case of She Got What She Wanted But Lost What She Had. Romola Garai's often self-effacing performance in the title role is one of the many elements that give this unusual film its special sting.