Saint Ange

For the life of me, I cannot understand the fierce and almost resentful nature of many of the opinions given here. I was fully prepared to see another one of those over-blown affairs that put style over substance and usually bore me to bits after 15 minutes or so of their „Amélie"-type smugness and undeserved self-confidence. In fact. SAINT ANGE is a very careful, very sensitive story of a young woman who struggles with her feelings about her impending motherhood. The ending made perfect sense to me, whether read as a ghost story of sorts or a paranoid fantasy. The actresses are uniformly excellent, particularly Virginie Ledoyen and Lou Doillon, as is Catriona MacColl, who you might still remember from those colorful Fulci extravaganzas from the early eighties. The splendid photography makes good use of the grey and cold blue colours of the orphanage, which is embedded in green and brown tones – Mother Nature. The fantasy ending also introduces a clinical white for good measure. In view of the many cinematic exercises of today that talk their subtexts to death, SAINT ANGE uses a formal elegance that is breath-taking. Actually, I didn't find one single frame that was superfluous. In a way, the film also shares several themes with Laugier's well-received and harrowing MARTYRS, as it is basically another – albeit more tender – tale of a bruised young woman under dire circumstances. The ending of MARTYRS can also be read as a paranoid fantasy, with traces of hope hidden in a complex framework of depressing human depravity. No, I liked SAINT ANGE a lot. And, by the way, Joe Lo Duca – who started with Sam Raimi's THE EVIL DEAD – delivered a haunting and memorable music score. An excellent movie.

Saint Ange starts pretty amazing and sets you in the movie's gloomy mood immediately but the truth is that the movie is bad. The settings for the movie are indeed very good and with a solid storyline and correct flow the movie would have been a great one. The shots, colors, lighting and close ups are truly amazing but it's a shame that the movie starts to bore you after halfway, also there are lots of things that don't really make sense leaving you confused and in the end it's somewhat unbearable so you pray for it to end finally. My 3 rating is only because the film's photography is truly brilliant otherwise i would have sticked to 1.

From the tone of these comments you would think this was the worst film ever made (and a few comments say that literally). It wasn't as good as "The Others" and such, but the worst movie ever? Please. It was well shot and the minimalist production design was a welcome break from hyper-stylized films like "Silent Hill". The story did take a long time to develop, but the tension built nicely and it had an Argento feel to me. Not every movie has to be "Transformers", moving at Mach 10 from the first frame. Maybe the more subtle storytelling nature was why everyone reacted so poorly. It certainly didn't beat you over the head with plot points, and did feel like a key scene or two was left out of the final cut (setting up the kittens for example) but overall was a nice, spooky little film. Everyone's opinion is valid if course, and it's nowhere near my favorite film, but I had to defend it for some reason. Maybe it's because there are so many TRULY bad films out there, and I want people to save their venom for the movies that deserve it.

I understand why some people decided to give this movie a low rating, but I do not believe this movie deserves a low rating. If you were looking for a "horror" film in the slasher, in-your-face, gory, bloody sense, then I can see how you were disappointed. But if that is your only definition of a scary movie, I don't think you should be reviewing movies. This movie had many good qualities, and I believe many people could enjoy it if they gave it a chance. Foreign horror movies have a very different approach, and if you can get on board with that, I think you will like this. If Saw IV is your idea of quality horror, don't bother.

First off, this is supposed to come out as a treat for fans of Fulci's The Beyond (it even features the return of its star Catriona MacColl) and his other gloomy films. So it's got nice locations (romanian studios), pretty minimal as the whole movie takes place in a great mansion supposed to be a WWII orphanage, its narrowing woods and cellars. Cast is pretty top notch with kinky Virginie Ledoyen (L'Eau Froide, La Cérémonie, La fille seule - her only good movies in my opinion - The Beach) and wacko Lou Doillon (Jane Birkin's daughter - one of the most irritating actress to come out of french cinema lately, but physically disturbing and therefore probably appropriate for this movie!).

Beautiful photography, gloomy atmosphere, weird and nasty children (kinda reminiscent of the evil ones in Cronenberg's The Brood, but not really either), derelict locations, potential scream queens, this movie shows good production values but sadly remains pretty lazy storywise. I won't describe the story too much, but after a pretty classy/classic (easy) hour of ghost induced story, the movie goes wacko and tries to become a bit disturbing. Unfortunately, even if the scenery and filming shows you some very weird and dare I say effective clinical & morbid images (the only part giving the movie a little of its own personality), those images bears no real depth and fall flat in utter stupidity! So even though I admire the plastic quality of the last half hour, I remain highly skeptical in its capacity to convey an interesting story falling back on its feet without relying on weirdness because the lazy writer(s?) have no real vision of the story as a whole. Also, the twist revelation about the cats killer's identity is really lame. Sadly, another example of France incapacity to produce thoughtful and provocative fantasy...

Think a mixture of Furie's "The Entity", Robert Wise's "The Haunting" with Fulci's "The Beyond" and Chris Cunningham's clinical imagery.

Just one's opinion.

4/10