Surprise, surprise – Luc Besson, the French filmmaker who turned stick-thin supermodel Milla Jovovich into an action star with the likes of The Fifth Element, envisions a celestial being as a leggy, skinny supermodel in Angel-A, his stylish if mannered ode to the films of the French New Wave. Like Francois Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player or Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, Angel-A features a hero (Jamel Debbouze) trying to get by in a world of petty crime using little more than charm. Here, he has some help from Angela (get it?), a mysterious blonde with unexplained omniscience. Angel-A requires Rie Rasmussen, as Angela, to do little more than pose, usually dangling a cigarette that’s only slightly thinner than her legs. Besson knows how to frame this sort of stuff, even more so when it’s filmed – as is the case here – in black and white. But Angel-A never works as more than the writer-director’s own fetish object. I’m sure Besson could watch this on a loop, but for me once was more than enough.
