Angel

Directed by Francois Ozon, starring Romola Garai, Sam Neill, Lucy Russell, Michael Fassbender, Charlotte Rampling

With his adaptation of a little-known 1957 literary melodrama by English writer Elizabeth Taylor, French director Francois Ozon joins an illustrious yet small band of his compatriots who have made films in Britain. Ozon's foray into the life of romantic fiction writer Angel Deverell should, however, be seen more in the context of his own eccentric choices. Angel, his ninth film in just over 10 years, represents yet another career hop, following such diverse adventures in style as his black comedy Sitcom; his Fassbinder adaptation Water Drops on Burning Rocks; his kitsch country house murder musical 8 Women; his Hitchcockian sex mystery Swimming Pool; and his scenes of a crumbling marriage in 5x2.

Having revived the career of Charlotte Rampling in both the sober drama Under the Sand and the more stylized Swimming Pool (she appears in a small role here, too), Ozon now provides an impressive canvas for the skills of rising British actress Romola Garai, who appears in practically every scene of this fascinating film curio.

Ozon signals his camp intentions from the off, with the film's titles written in large pink lettering, the color of fondant fancies. These are contrasted with an austere vista of Edwardian England, where the young Angel Deverell is at school and already creating florid fictions. Angel's precocity and determination allow her to write her way out of poverty, leading her to a London publishing house run by whiskery Sam Neill, who is beguiled and spots the commercial potential of Angel's purple prose and unleashes her on an immediately adoring public.

Neill's wife, played by Rampling, is less impressed with this ball of provincial bad taste, a disdain which leads to one of the great, withering exit lines of modern cinema. "If Ms Deverell will excuse me," she says, after Angel has commented ignorantly on her postprandial piano playing, "I need to feed the canaries."

Angel takes in a faithful secretary Nora (played by Lucy Russell) who falls devotedly in love with her mistress, while Angel marries and supports Nora's artist brother Esme, played with brooding charisma by Michael Fassbender.

Ozon has certainly come up with a strange concoction here, one that, in tandem with Denis Lenoir's photography and Pascaline Chavanne's exquisite costumes, recalls Douglas Sirk, Vincente Minnelli and Mervyn LeRoy. But it's the performance of Romola Garai that makes the film something more than a game of film references and fashion gags. In Garai's hands, Angel becomes a tragic figure, caught between her own dreams and ambitions and a duller and more vicious reality.