Dream Life of Angels

Director Erick Zonca, who co-wrote the low-key script with Roger Bohbot, examines the unlikely friendship between two young Frenchwomen: Isa (Elodie Bouchez), a cheerful and sweet-tempered vagabond, and Marie (Natacha Regnier), an icy-blond beauty with hidden depths of anger and self-hatred. Zonca and Bohbot reveal layers of the two women’s characters through their relationships to each other and those around them—two burly nightclub bouncers, the club’s owner (who is also Marie’s heartless lover), and the comatose young woman whose apartment Isa and Marie are minding in her absence. Bouchez and Regnier (who shared the Best Actress award at Cannes) are both excellent, playing women whose differences first complement each other, then drive them apart in fiery, wounded confusion.