THE DREAMLIFE OF ANGELS (73)

Directed by: Erick Zonca

Starring: Elodie Bouchez, Natacha Regnier, Gregoire Colin

The Pitch: The friendship between two 20-year-old girls - cheerful drifter and unhappy seamstress, respectively - in the depressed French city of Lille.

Theo Sez: Glorious pair of contrasting character-studies : too bad the title ONE SINGS, THE OTHER DOESN'T was already taken, especially when Bouchez struts her stuff joyously, channelling Madonna for a come-as-your-favourite-star audition, while surly Regnier mocks the whole set-up with a defiantly half-hearted Lauren Bacall. One is an elfin child-woman ("That's a funny TV"), embracing life without guile, the other an abrasive rebel with a chip on her shoulder and an implied history of abuse - one dreams of connection, the other of power, refracted through her self-loathing into a longing to be mastered (sexually and otherwise) by a powerful man. She defines power in terms of class - but it's actually the film that's doing so, giving her a choice between slick, nasty rich guy and salt-of-the-earth working-class bloke so it can cluck disapprovingly at her poor judgment. Zonca's reverse snobbery gets a little much - but it also makes for a pleasingly unpretentious style (the kind that determinedly shuns background music) and zealously committed performances. Potent, skilful mix of rigour and sensitivity ; and the final shot, a slow dolly down a line of doughty female faces hunched over their work - Working Women! Unsung Heroines! - has a limpid grace that gets to you, regardless of ideology.