A generation ago, Luc Besson looked like the savior of European populist cinema. With his unabashedly indulgent visual style (at its most feverish in The Professional), his flair for the romantic (which peaked with The Big Blue) and his nifty way with an action sequence (any ten minutes of La Femme Nikita), he made an excellent case for himself as the Gallic love child of James Cameron and Michael Mann, blending impressive action set pieces with chic melancholia. Then, however, he jumped the shark spectacularly — his big budget sci-fi epic The Fifth Element contains both the best and worst of Besson, expressiveness tempered by sheer stupidity. And, while he continues to mint money in Europe as a producer, it's been years since a Luc Besson film's come close to being, y'know, good. (Of course, his six-year hiatus after 1999's catastrophic The Messenger certainly didn't help.)
Angel-A comes close. Damned close. So damned close that after an hour I wanted to stand up, summon my teenage self and declare to all within earshot that the man was back. Thank God I didn't, because the man still has issues, particularly with his endings. But for its first half, Angel-A is a gloriously lurid and lush adventure — vintage Besson. Jamel Debbouze is Andre, a desperate Arab-American-French con artist and gambler, whose attempt at suicide is upstaged by gorgeous Angela (Rie Rasmussen), a statuesque blonde who just happens to throw herself off the same bridge. Soon after he saves her, Angela has straightened up most of Andre's affairs, through a combination of tough talk, feminine wiles and pure sexual force. Her solution to his money problems is to take him to a club, then whore herself out to every man on the dance floor.
Of course, Angela, as hinted by the title, and hammered home by Besson's constantly framing her against images of wings or statues of angels, is no ordinary leggy blonde in a tiny cocktail dress. This is Besson's version of It's a Wonderful Life, only this time the angel fucks everybody in the room. And as long as it stays in that trashy, offbeat register, it's fine. The problems come when the director, somehow unsatisfied with Angela being a mere angel, also makes her an ass-kicking one. Suddenly the rules are changed, and a sleazy romantic fable tries to become an action flick. When he's working at the height of his power, Besson is a remarkably purposeful director. Every camera move, every expressive close-up, feels like it's driving towards a greater whole. Once Angel-A loses its direction, the illusion is shattered, and all we're left with is two-thirds of a great Luc Besson movie and one-third of what is, at best, merely a Luc Besson movie. — Bilge Ebiri