Marie Baie des Anges Review
by "Harvey S. Karten" (film_critic AT compuserve DOT com)May 22nd, 1998
MARIE BAIE DES ANGES
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D.
Sony Pictures Classics
Director: Manual Pradal
Writer: Manual Pradal
Cast:Vahina Giocante, Frederic Malgras
"Vahina Giocante is France's answer to Viagra. If you see her on the screen but don't go home with her, you will suffer side effects, but they're temporary." "So," said a friend, "Go see 'Mary Bear'" (as he pronounces the title). "It will get your juices flowing." This guy, who probably owns a respectable supply of testosterone, understands two things: 1) the power of movies to "get your juices flowing" and 2) the fact that Vahina Giocante is the only reason to see this French muddle. You see, Manuel Pradal, who introduces this new femme fatale to the cinema-loving world, probably thinks she's the next Brigitte Bardot. But while this fourteen-year-old who shows little personality has substantial good looks, there's nothing there that you won't find in any high school from the island of Jersey to the streets of Jersey City. If you will indulge another comparison, Mr. Pradal is no Harmony ("Kids") Korine, whose eponymous tykes fill their merry-go- roundelays with considerable humor in an equally plotless picture.
Marie (Vahina Giocante), who is nicknamed "Baie des Anges" (the bay of angels) because she hangs around a body of water in Nice which was once the home of a shark called ("anges de mer"), seems to have no home, or at least no curfew. She intends to make the most of this asset by throwing herself hedonistically into a gang of American sailors at a base where the Yanks appear alternately to be rehearsing for "South Pacific" and for "On the Town," with one naval hero doing a comic Gene Kelly shtick and others crowding around the jail-bait in a choreographed, lusty songfest. When one of the young French wanderers gets stabbed by a Yank whom he has just robbed and others in the youth gang call for "war" against the U.S. base, Marie doesn't give a fig. She's having fun with people who talk quite a bit less than Eric Rohmer's characters, her own countrymen.
But just as the Americans tire of her, she runs into a kid fresh out of reform school, a good-looking, feral, devil-may- care Orso (Frederic Milagras), who sneaks into swank homes on the Riviera to take the jewels but is not against picking the pockets of Americans who are swimming and are careless enough to leave their francs, their watches and their clothes in the nearby bushes. Instantly attracted, she follows this petty hoodlum around like a cocker pup whose owner is dangling a sausage. They drink, tussle, and make merry as only teens know how to do, but this being a French movie that needs to make like Truffaut, it has an ending which is not in the typical Hollywood tradition.
The Montpelier-born director, Manuel Pradal, intends this first feature to be a fairy tale combining the natural beauty of the Riviera with the sordid delinquencies of roving bands of recent immigrants from Yugoslavia and Albania. To ornament the hoped-for fabulous aspect, he haphazardly throws in scenes from a Grand Prix, from Carnaval and from other Mediterranean elements. He allegedly spent a year hunting for young non-professionals, met 15,00 kids, and looked for performers who could best express their resentment at being outsiders. Though he deserves credit for casting young people right out of juvenile prisons in France and Italy, the title "Marie Baie des Anges" sounds better than the film looks. The picture jumps around too rapidly as if directed by a channel surfer impatient for a machine-gun series of gratifications, and its characters are too little developed to garner our sympathy. Rated R. Running time: 90 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
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