ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies

FRANCOIS OZON is one of the finest French directors of his generation. His films show an acute understanding of human relationships, love, loss and longing. Angel sees him venturing far from his comfort zone with an English-language adaptation of a period romance from the pen of Elizabeth Taylor – the great novelist rather than the much married film star.

Set in Edwardian England, Angel is as lush and inviting as anything from the golden age of Hollywood melodrama. It has the look of something that George Cukor or Vincente Minnelli might have made. Ozon’s decision to embrace such an artificial style, allied to the rather creaky nature of the story leads to a stiff and sadly unconvincing film.

Romola Garai (seen in Atonement) stars as Angel Deverell, a headstrong grocer’s daughter who dreams of becoming a famous writer and owning the country mansion she walks past but can never enter. Her writing will never win any prizes but publisher Theo Gilbright (Sam Neill) finds a vast audience for her purple prose and romantic fancies.

She quickly becomes a bestselling author, the owner of the mansion she has always coveted, and marries handsome, penniless painter Esme (Michael Fassbender). She is to discover that unlike her fiction life does not guarantee her a happy ending.

Angel boasts a great cast that also includes Charlotte Rampling and Lucy Russell, but it is clumsy when it should be elegant, exasperating when it should be engaging. It marks a bold experiment for Ozon but not one we would want him to repeat.

Selected nationwide release

Director: Francois Ozon
Cast: Romola Garai, Sam Neill, Charlotte Rampling, Lucy Russell, Michael Fassbender, Jacqueline Tong, Una Stubbs.
Screenwriter: Francois Ozon based on the novel by Elizabeth Taylor
Certificate: 15
Running time: 120 mins
Country: France/UK/Belgium
Year: 2007