"Dreamlife of Angels" is an absorbing film about two young French women struggling to find their place in life. Both are solidly working class, unskilled and rootless. Circumstance has thrown them together and the film describes a two-month period as they housesit the apartment of a car accident victim. Their prospects are not great, and each deals with the hand life has dealt them very differently.

This is not an uplifting movie, but not a downer either. It tells it's story straight up and unflinchingly. Everything about it is top drawer; the screenplay, the directing and especially the acting by the two young leads, Elodie Bouchez and Natacha Regnier. We'll definitely see more them in the future. This movie is highly recommended.

I really didn't like this movie much at all. Much of it was because I didn't like either main character much at all--particularly Marie, as she's mostly a self-involved and hateful person. So, because of this and the generally gloomy and awful mood of the film, I can't see the average viewer liking this film.

However, this is a rare film that is actually well-written but probably doesn't have a large audience. Those who will like it are either those who like depressing and awful films (fans of Bergman's most depressing films, this is probably for you) OR someone who watches it for the psychological studies. I was a therapist before my mid-life crisis and now I teach psychology in high school. If it weren't for all the nudity in the film, it would be a great film to show the kids when we discuss personality disorders. Isa is a pretty good example of an immature person who MIGHT be diagnosed with a Schizotypal Personality Disorder because she is just plain weird, though not apparently mentally ill. The connection she creates with the girl in the coma is just bizarre as are many of her other behaviors. Marie, though, is the more unlikable character and is a more clearly defined demonstration of a personality disorder. She actually shifts from an apparent Avoidant Personality Disorder (a person who acts like they need no one and may be quite surly to prove it) to a Dependent Personality Disorder (she MUST have one particular man, even though he mistreats her and is a bad person).

Once again, this is not a fun movie to watch and the ending is depressing as can be, so don't rush out to see this movie unless you are a person looking for this specific type film.

For a long time, French cinema had the bias to choose to overlook the marginalized, the social misfits who have trouble to struggle and to fit in a society. In the nineties, some French filmmakers began to get interested in these categories of ill-fated ones as Erick Zonca's tale bears witness. His chronicle of these two friends facing the harsh economic, social realities together was bestowed with prizes in 1998, 1999, especially at the Cannes festival where it was one of the jury's favorites. French public and press specialized in cinema gave it an ovation and the film enjoys a favorable reputation abroad, rather rightly so.

The director's forte is to showcase and to assess the persona of his two young interprets. At first sight, they're a mismatched pair that everything opposes and brings together. Isabelle (Elodie Bouchez): a 20 year-old young woman who brims with energy and generosity, ready to accept any job not to get bogged down in poverty including to distribute advertising leaflets on roller skates dressed in "sandwich-woman". Beside her, Marie (Natacha Régnier),bilious, mercurial dissimilar to her sidekick (to put it mildly). Apart from the liking she feels for Isabelle and their friendship is a touch of light in this drab city, she's her complete antipode. She can't put up with her distressing condition, she's rather in bad terms with her mother. She even shows total egocentricity because she doesn't even go to a lot of trouble to visit her cousin Sandrine in a coma and whose mother died shortly after wards. A consequence to her profound discontentment and to her inability to come to terms with her social condition. Maybe an exit to this life for her would be to live with Chris, a rich kid with a more than comfortable living standards. She has a crush on him but the latter treats her like a ghostly girl.

Erick Zonca's chronicle is composed of two parts. The first half is nearly faultless and a prime one from every angle. The director tries to capture short-term moments of bliss when the two friends are together and there's a communicative "feel-good" vibe. Zonca also deftly eschews what could make caricatured some characters like the ruffian-like bouncers. The second part veers to a doom-laden turn which even if it serves the title of the film and Marie also makes it formulaic. From the moment when Marie is enamored of Chris, the audience has to expect the inevitable. Marie's love for Chris jeopardizes her friendship with Isabelle who is very aware that Marie's lover considers her as a casual lover and leads her up the garden path. So, almost adamant feuds break out between Isa and Marie who don't manage to calmly communicate face to face. Zonca steers his film according to what the audience expects and the poise that the film created in the first half is damaged and not well dovetailed as a whole. The interest tends to dwindle and Mr Zonca, I would have liked more unexpected, less easiness but fortunately the communicative vitality, the acting full of spontaneity of the two main actresses largely stop you from dismissing this piece of work.

I don't want to be a major spoiler and pour out the end. I will just say that it encompasses an upbeat, placating whiff thanks to a song discerningly chosen. "La Vie Rêvée Des Anges" is worth a watch thanks essentially to the two actresses whose performances boosted their careers. Natacha Régnier was venturesome to agree to hold difficult or trying roles later as in François Ozon's disquieting "les Amants Criminels" (1999).