André (Jamel Debbouze) introduces himself to us from the get-go as a man who would like us to believe his life is going well; that he is well-liked. And yet André proves to be falser than Willy Loman could ever hope to have been, because André knows he's lying to you. He's a sleazy guy whose biggest fault is that he's a con man with no confidence. He's about fifty-thousand euros in debt, and his creditors are the sort of men who will sooner pitch you off the Eiffel Tower than show you mercy when you come up a few thousand short.
Euros? Eiffel Tower? Oh no, you say. This isn't one of those foreign films, is it?
Why yes, as a matter of fact, it is. Angel-A is entirely in French with subtitles. Probably, if you're the artsy type, the language of love is a plus. But even if you are a little apprehensive about reading an entire movie, don't be: the mark of a good foreign film, Angel-A's story is sure to captivate you to the point where you've forgotten the subtitles halfway through.
That story, by the way, begins when André decides it's time to take his life. As he stands teetering on the edge of a bridge, he screams up to heaven, asking why God has abandoned him. And then he turns and notices a beautiful woman at the next post, also ready to jump. They exchange a few words, and then she does it. Not thinking, André jumps in after her, (discovering in the interim that his suicide probably would have failed for height of the bridge anyway), and pulls the woman to safety. She awakes, and he asks her what could possibly compel a woman like her to take her life. She says 'same as you.' He says that's impossible-- i'm ugly, and stupid, and disgusting. To which she replies, 'so am i. on the inside.'
André is ready to leave, when he considers that this is perhaps the only time in his life that he has done something truly worthwhile, and begs the woman not to go jumping off any other bridges--if not for her sake, than his, so he can believe that he saved someone--to which she replies the only way he can be sure is if he lets her stay with him. André likes the idea of having an attractive and intimidating woman by his side, so he acquiesces, and asks her name. "Angela," she says.
Throughout the remainder of the movie, Angela (Rie Rasmussen) dedicates herself to returning the favor; that is to say, "saving" André's life from the hole he's dug himself into. Their journey, which takes them through Parisian parks, the beautiful Seine, dark city bars and high society clubs, is chronicled by what might be some of the most striking black and white cinematography in film history, complemented by a soulful original score by composer Anja Garbarek.
It's not often these days that a film can take the old redemption motif and make it fresh and interesting, but director Luc Besson (Nikita, The Fifth Element) manages to pull it off with this timid hustler and his six-foot companion who "fell from the sky." Angel-A isn't breaking any new ground here, but it will certainly lift your spirits. It might even make you believe in angels.
City of Angels, roaring twenties, spanish mission. A young girl with her arm in a sling drops a note--"in English!"--out the window to a young nurse, and then runs downstairs to see where the note went. She passes the ice delivery man, the priest, and several nurses, and eventually wanders in to a room where she sees a bedridden man holding her note. She runs over and wordlessly snatches the note away from him, but as she goes to leave, he asks how she broke her arm. "I fell," she says. "Me too." She returns to his bedside with a chair. He asks her name, she replies "Alexandria."
"Did you know you're named after Alexander the Great?" So he tells Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) a short story about the warrior, and says that if she comes back tomorrow he'll tell her an 'epic.'
And so begins a fantastic story of daring and adventure, loyalty and treachery, as Roy Walker (Lee Pace) narrates and Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) uses her imagination to paint a vivid picture of his story. There were five of them: the Indian, the ex-slave, an explosive expert, Charles Darwin, and the Masked Bandit. They had one common enemy: Governor Odious.
As it turns out, Roy is only telling the story because he can use it to get Alexandria to do things for him. He reaches a cliffhanger, and then refuses to continue until she runs and gets him some pills. If she refuses, he kills someone off.
It is in these interspersed real life segments that we realize each of the main characters in the story is someone Alexandria has seen at the mission, which is intriguing insomuch as that is precisely the sort of technique we would expect a child to use when imagining such a story, and is (from a psychological standpoint) exactly what our brains do when we dream.
And what a dream this is! Vivid colors and extraordinary views are relentlessly breathtaking, and you inevitably find yourself wondering where the camera work ended and the CG began. Yet director Tarsem Singh maintains that there are no special effects in the film. That budget went instead towards traveling expenses, as the film was shot in 18 different countries on 26 different locations. The transitions between these locations are often surprisingly seamless, always sensible, and ingeniously executed.
From the opening black and white sequence (where we see Roy's crippling fall) to the equally engaging stock footage montage at the end (where we see just how dangerous the work of early twentieth-century stuntmen actually was), this film is a gorgeous captivating masterpiece. The Fall is, quite literally, the best movie you've never heard of.
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