The french black comedy Angel-A   is quite good, very worth seeing or renting once it comes out on DVD. It is not exceptional but is a very good film to watch on a lazy afternoon or evening.

 

The film's hero (I use the word very loosely here) is an American immigrant from Morocco living in Paris. He is an unsuccessful crook with three fraud convictions back in the US. In Paris, he has borrowed money from several sets of gangsters for a business scheme in Argentina that never made it off the ground. He is also a scruffy, dirty bearded very short man. He just looks like a hopeless never-do-well.

 

One day, all the different crooks  separately confront him and demand their money else he faces grievous bodily harm. He's had enough so he decides to jump off one of Paris' many bridges into the Siene. He is about to jump when he notices a tall lovely slim blonde woman on the ledge near him about to do the same thing. He argues with her telling her that with all the bridges in Paris, why can't she find her own bridge to jump of him rather than his. She jumps anyway and he jumps after her to save her. She saves him of course.

 

Turns out that she is an angel, named Angela,  sent to save him and turn his life around. But she is one very strange angel. He needs money so she sets out to appear to prostitute herself in a nightclub for 1000 euros a customer to raise the money for him.  She raises the 35,000 he needs in one evening while he drinks himself into a stupor at the bar.

 

She is determined to get him to see his worth and to love himself. He naturally, falls in love with her. There are a number of funny scenes when she takes on a whole gang of thugs when they want the money he owes them. She is one tough lady.

 

This film, shot in black and white, reminds me of the B and W comedies of the 40's combined with a few of the  films of previous decades of angels come to earth to save some lost soul.

 

Quite good but not exceptional. You will enjoy it and be surprised at her clever feminism.