Paris is Heaven

Reviewed - Angel-A: It's been seven years since Luc Besson directed his risible biopic Joan of Arc. Although he has produced dozens of movies since then, he did not direct again until he made Angel-A in virtual secrecy in Paris last summer.

This minimalist movie takes Besson back to his roots, to his imaginative 1983 debut, The Last Battle, in that both films are in black-and-white and revolve around just two characters. However, while The Last Battle was dialogue-free, Angel-A is positively loquacious by Besson standards. And, while it has the semblance of a modest production, the special effects team, a key element in any Besson crew, was summoned for crucial sequences.

The story is simplicity itself. Andre, a 28-year-old Algerian immigrant, is up to his neck in debt. He's dangled over the side of the Eiffel Tower by gangsters, who give him a deadline to pay up or else, and his humorously pathetic last-ditch attempts to save himself fail hopelessly.

Ending it all is the only option, Andre decides, and he's about to leap into the Seine when he spots a tall blonde woman in a little black dress on the same bridge. She introduces herself as Angela, and it transpires that she is his guardian angel (hence the title). But the unorthodox methods this chain-smoking angel devises for Andre's possible redemption do not conform to anything we were taught in religious education classes.

To borrow the title of the definitive angel movie classic, it's a wonderful life, or at least it might be if Andre could be given a reason to believe in himself and - this is not traditional church teaching either - if he tapped into his inner female side. That certainly makes a change from Besson's screen heroines releasing their inner macho selves.

A morality tale anchored in mortality and human frailty, Besson's sweet and tender vignette sustains this simple, even naive conceit to the end, and is buoyed by the affecting chemistry between the two leads. Playing the angel is statuesque Danish supermodel and short film director Rie Rasmussen, and cast as Andre is the diminutive and engaging Jamel Debbouze, a one-armed Moroccan immigrant who became one of the most popular entertainers on French television and who shared the best actor award at Cannes this year with his co-stars in the war movie Indigenes.

A monochrome valentine to Besson's native Paris, Angel-A started shooting at dawn every day, and gifted cinematographer Thierry Arbogast indelibly captures the city when it is as deserted as Times Square was in Vanilla Sky. Norwegian composer Anja Garbarek bathes this charming movie in an atmospheric, low-key jazz-funk score.