While the ending of Angel-A has a certain taint to its “forced hand” nature in terms of “persuading” (with physical coercion) a girl that she wants to do something, it still can’t be denied that the script has its charms. Particularly in the niche genre of “guardian angel films” (including, of course, The Bishop’s Wife). This aforementioned taint, of course, is because of Luc Besson’s now sullied reputation thanks to the numerous rape accusations against him post-#MeToo. Initiated by actress Sand Van Roy, the total number of women who have come forward to report misconduct stands at nine. But in 2005, when Angel-A was released, Besson was still riding high on an artistic reputation spurred mostly by 1997’s The Fifth Element (in 1999, he would ruin all that goodwill with The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, waiting a full six years before releasing something new).
With his divorce from short-lived muse Milla Jovovich finalized in 1999 (not so coincidentally, when The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc was released), Besson turned to a new seemingly otherworldly beauty: Rie Rasmussen. Playing the title role, she comes into the life of André Moussah (Jamel Debbouze, whose breakout was in 2001’s Amélie, directed by another French auteur, Jean-Pierre Jeunet) when he least expects it. Or rather, perhaps when he should be expecting it the most after he climbs over a bridge above the Seine, looks heavenward and says, “Nobody gives a shit, huh? I’ll do it. Is that what you want? Why did you abandon me? Why do you never answer me?” At that moment, just as he’s about to go through with it, he happens to look over and see a tall blonde–complete with smeared mascara and a form-fitting black dress–standing on the same edge, about to do the same thing. He calls out to her, urging her not to do it, but it’s too late. She’s jumped.
In this way–apart from Angela being André’s guardian angel–the parallel to It’s A Wonderful Life is obvious, with Clarence (Henry Travers) also pulling the same stunt on George Bailey (James “Jimmy” Stewart) when George contemplates the endless benefits of suicide as well. Clarence, as his guardian angel, has been tasked with making George see just how important he is in the small town he’s been trapped in his whole life. What’s more, just like André, George is pushed to the brink of being unable to handle existence any longer as a result of money. While George is out $8,000 for his business, the Building and Loan, thanks to Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell) misplacing it at the bank before actually depositing it (giving their nemesis, Mr. Potter [Lionel Barrymore], a chance to steal it himself so as to invoke scandal and embezzlement charges for George), André is in massive financial debt to a number of bookies and lowlifes throughout Paris thanks to his own impetuous, self-deceiving nature. His self-imposed blind spot being an Achilles’ heel that Angela has been sent to correct, among other things–including André’s inability to love as a direct consequence of not loving himself.
Part of his adeptness at ignoring an inherent self-loathing stems from “keeping busy.” In other words, constantly getting himself into trouble. Which is why, as he says at the beginning before getting punched in the face by one of his creditors, “Paris is a spectacular city, but I’m too busy to make the most of it.” With no solution as to how to pay back his massive debts, he decides to use everyone’s unspoken “get out of jail free” card. But when his suicide attempt is botched and he starts blaming Angela, screaming, “My problem is I feel ugly, stupid and completely useless. I doubt you could relate to that,” she counters that she feels exactly the same way “on the inside” despite what her outer “fabulous” appearance might indicate. This is, in truth, her entire argument. That no matter how you look on the outside, what’s inside is what people really see radiating from you. Thus, André’s later revelation, “If you think you’re shit, you’re drawn to shit. That’s life.”
Cassiel (Andre Braugher), the fellow angel who roams Los Angeles in search of people to guide and help with Seth (Nicolas Cage) in City of Angels (adapted from Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire), also has a take on what life is: eventually dying. In the meantime, a human must do all he can to make the most of this existence. Angela feels André has been so busy seeing everything through his myopic lens that he can’t even take the time to appreciate that he lives in a city filled with majesty.
“Isn’t this the most beautiful city?” Angela asks him after they face his first creditor. She now has him back by the bridge as she forces him to look out at the view while breathing in deeply. The running line being that he needs to breathe. To have the time and lack of constant worry required to focus and cherish the small things that make life wondrous in between those many moments of nonstop shit.
Initially, when he starts acting more interested in her, he suddenly feels her reciprocation is too good to be true, trying to run away from her after they share such an intimate connection (based on both attempting to kill themselves at the same time). She balks, “Men. You’re all the same. You jump in, then you throw us away.” Feeling an inexplicable pull toward her, André walks back to the river’s edge to ask her if she’ll promise not to try killing herself again. He suggests she should try to find a cause that will give her purpose, leading her to steer that notion toward him. Which is why she offers herself up for the day to do whatever he wants. This, of course, is what would be described as Besson’s ultimate fantasy, recreating himself in a stout, not exactly conventionally attractive male lead who manages to secure the interest of a woman way out of his league (Rasmussen is, indeed, very much a Jovovich redux).
Convinced that with her at his side, he’ll gain more respect from the men who want to shake him down and threaten his life, he asks her to come with him into a meeting with Franck (Gilbert Melki)–who, just a few hours ago, had one of his goons hold him over the side of the Eiffel Tower–where she famously keeps her legs open the entire time. In Franck’s office is a replica of the Louvre’s famed Winged Victory of Samothrace, lending Besson the perfect opportunity to frame Angela’s profile against it so that it appears as though the wings are hers. And yes, Besson is one of the few directors who gets away with such heavy-handedness.
In City of Angels, that other well-known (and much less well-reviewed) movie about a romance developing between a guardian angel and their “charge,” a key difference is that, as Cassiel states, “Angels aren’t human. We were never human.” At some point, however, Angela was–which is why when she comes back to Earth, she can still apparently enjoy activities like smoking (“Where I live, there’s no smoking. Can’t even sneak one. I’m catching up.”) and eating, but cannot remember anything concrete about her past as a human. As for Seth’s unfeeling realm of angels, he recounts that a little girl he had to guide into heaven demanded, “What good would wings be if you could never feel the wind on your face?” In contrast, Angela can enjoy the same things humans can without needing to become one, while also proudly declaring, “I’m immortal.”
In all three movies, when the angels confess what they are to the subjects they’re tasked with caring for, they’re met with anger and incredulity. “It’s too much for them. People don’t believe in us anymore,” declares an ex-angel/current patient of Maggie’s (Meg Ryan) named Mr. Messenger (Dennis Franz). It is said to Seth when he inquires as to whether Messenger ever told anyone who he was before. This need for “proof” is something André iterates to Angela upon insisting that people need it to believe in anything remotely “supernatural.” They’ve been too jaded by science and technology to ever take what is said at face value, often even doubting what they see right before their very eyes.
Because L.A. is a city of cars, there is a certain general emptiness to it in that one never really sees people. To that end, Paris is markedly deserted the entire duration of Angel-A, a deliberate maneuver on the part of Besson indicating that André and Angela are the only lovers left alive, as it were. They are the only ones who can truly see each other as they are. Just as Maggie is the only one who can see Seth–literally. But that’s only because his feelings for her are so strong that he wills it so.
While Seth’s “missions” aren’t to help the living, so much as to guide them into the next realm, Angela’s tasks always consist of aiding a human with ostensibly low-self esteem. As she tells André, “Since you have such low self-esteem, you fall for flattery.” Apparently, on each mission in Angela’s angel world, you can also pick a different body, and this time, she opted for “Sexy Bitch.” When André demands jokingly, “You been doing it long?” she replies with a deadpan tone, “Three hundred years or so.”
For Seth, time is less concrete. Obviously, considering how quickly he falls in love with Maggie. And that turn of phrase uses “fall” in such a way as to have manifold meanings. Because it is a “fall” to find yourself in love with someone. A fall from grace, a fall from Eden. That pre-love state of existence is arguably the most we’ll ever know of the ignorance connoted by paradise. But once you fall, you’re doomed. At the end of Act One in City of Angels, after intense yearning and burning on Seth’s part, Maggie finally sees him–“stumbling upon” him in the hallway and calling him out for lingering after visiting hours.
So begins the stalkerdom that Hollywood normalized and further made okay because Seth is a divine being so he can do whatever he wants. Like sit next to Maggie while she’s in the bathtub and can’t see him. Just as in Angel-A, there is a mirror scene where Maggie’s angel hovers over her shoulder. While André is aware that Angela is disappearing deliberately to let him look into “the glass” and see himself on his own, Maggie has no idea that Seth is staring straight into her soul (a.k.a. at her naked body).
Over time, Seth finds it too irresistible to not make himself known to Maggie. And so he wields his magnetism in a way that draws her in and makes her feel a connection she never has with anyone else. When she learns of what he really is, her rage is expected. But it is only after another ex-angel/current patient of hers, Mr. Messenger (Dennis Franz), explains that Seth has a choice, and he can give up everything he knows of the bliss of being an angel in order to be with her, that Maggie decides she loves him too much to let him do that. And so, in the same way Angela tries to convince André she doesn’t love him and that she has to move on (even though Maggie is not the angel in the permutation) now that her job is done, Maggie does the same to Seth when she rejects him at the library with tears in her eyes, giving Seth the signal that she doesn’t really mean it (some more classic “no means yes” messaging from Hollywood). So naturally, right after he chooses to “fall” a.k.a. jump off a building so he can finally be human, therefore engage in a full-fledged relationship with Maggie, she’s condemned to kick the bucket. So yeah, he basically gives up everything–the “wonderful life” of never having to worry about money or feel any kind of pain–all so he can have sex with Maggie a mere one time.
Alas, the gods frown on those who would try to be happy, and so, in this way, City of Angels offers more realism, so to speak, than Angel-A, which finds Besson giving in to his usual unavoidable sentimentality at the end. And when Angela is literally forced to give up her angelhood by André, there are no repercussions. In fact, it seems as though they have God’s blessing. A fantasy, to be sure. And even It’s A Wonderful Life manages to offer a more realistic outlook on existence. But regardless, Angel-A remains one of the better works of the Besson oeuvre with its wanton allure and the idea that love can actually overcome a seemingly insurmountable obstacle.
