La Vie Rêvée des Anges

(Angels' Dreams)

A film by Erick Zonca (France, 1998),

with Elodie Bouchez, Natacha Regnier, Grégoire Colin.

Elodie Bouchez and Natacha Regnier, Winners of the Interpretation Prize at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.

Two lonely young women, Isa and Marie, meet. In spite of their difference, both girls join their solitude, giving birth to an obvious, instant friendship that implicitly unveils like a mutual need, help and adoption. To what extent two opposite characters can actually understand each other remains a fragile mystery that only time can emphasize... What's the actual gist of friendship?

Erick Zonca's first feature-length film is a breakthrough performance: he succeeds in making from a relatively hackneyed topic -the story of a friendship between two characters, who have an outright different perception of life- a moving human story thanks to Elodie Bouchez and Natacha Regnier's outstanding interpretations. In spite of a couple of déjà vu elements -the character of the bastard who drives Marie crazy and the predictable following events-, the actresses' focused acts are enough to keep us mesmerized all along the story. It would have been a definitely interesting experience, from a technical viewpoint, to check out the very same film with a swap of the lead characters as Bouchez suggested it earlier. Still, La Vie Rêvée des Anges is a beautiful tragic story that highlights social background as a possible burden if one is not able to transcend it. The film should also enable Bouchez and Regnier (Pascal Bonitzer's Encore) to broaden their notorieties and we look forward to seeing them soon in further productions -with an even more radical change in the character as far as independent productions specialist Bouchez (Clubbed to Death, Louise, Zonzon, Les Kidnappeurs...) is concerned.

BACK HOME