Why such a low rating?

Thanks for the info about the reviews, that's lovely to hear. The trailer just looked so promising that I was astonished the rating wasn't higher (but I suppose 20 votes is hardly a fair cross section to go on)

Variety also gave it a bad review. They said one of the problems is that it is miscast. I don't know, but I still want to see it and hope it gets released in the US. There have been many times I've enjoyed a film that critics have not.

I totally agree with Hanin. Plus Ozon seemed to be worried to show us that he can do this kind of films, but his lack of inspiration is all over the film. i think that those funny akward moments were the only sincere ones.

So, despite the beautiful art direction, cinematography, the clever acting (above the line for 'Angel' but it was the role) the interesting ending (about who's going to be remembered in art - maybe the most important point of the movie) and some evocative shots, I found the movie really really boring. I couldn't wait for it to be boring.

And I wasn't the only one: I saw it at the Berlin film festival, and the public was confused and totally bored by this film: I can assure you there were no standing ovations.

Too bad, I like François Ozon very much. I look forward his next film anyway.

"The problem is that the movie switches between genres - the first half of the movie is like a parody of a melodrama, but the second half is pretty much straightforwardly melodrama - and that doesn't work at all, because it makes it really hard to connect with the characters."

I just watched it at home. You hit the nail on the head, though I feel Fassbender at times acted as though he was in a *real* drama at times and that threw me off as well. The "joke" became not so funny and Angel's eulogy was jarring. I thought, "Oh, that's right...this is supposed to be a parody of a melodrama". I couldn't keep connected to the movie because I couldn't trust it

PLEASE keep us updated on how the movie is recieved in Fracne as its opening there first FromPariswithlove.

I think the movie will do really love and having read the book and that low rated review I think Francois has stayed really close to the book - and for those who haven't read it I think the movie will be difficult for them to digest.

The movie is suppose to be melodramatic, filled with drama and the main character of Angel Deverall is suppose to be a person people wont warm too.

Talking about ratings and reviews, I just wanted to share a review published last week in the "Hollywood Reporter" during the Berlin Film Festival.
( I'm sorry, I have not mastered yet the art of "linking" to an already published article, that's why I pasted the whole review instead of putting the link)

Berlin Festival - If Steven Soderbergh's touchstone for "The Good German" was early 1940s Warner Bros., then Francois Ozon's inspiration for his lavish screen adaptation of Elizabeth Taylor's 1957 Edwardian-era novel "Angel" is late 1930s MGM. More specifically, it's a Technicolor costume drama about a pre-feminist woman, battling her way to fame and fortune, choosing and fulfilling her own destiny against all odds through dint of her talent and ostentatious behavior.

Like Soderbergh, Ozon isn't content with mere pastiche. He wants to re-examine the social mores and emotional complexities of a particular era's take on such a personality and the society that produced her. He is seeking a psychological truth that goes beyond cinematic artifice about a nouveau-riche woman who wills herself into existence.

"Angel," the last Competition film to debut at the Berlin International Film Festival, plays to several audiences, the most obvious being older women and cineastes who will delight in the old-fashioned process shots, framing, editing, musical score and the colors and refinery of the costumes. Ozon's name certainly assures solid boxoffice in western Europe and in all probability North American art houses.

Angel Deverell, played with fierce emotional abandon by Romola Garai, is a tempestuous and troubling heroine, who fascinates even as she appalls.
Scarlett O'Hara comes to mind as a model, but unlike the daughter of Southern nobility, Angel is not to the manor born. Indeed, the movie begins with her living in a comfortably shabby flat above the provincial
grocery store her mom owns and runs.

The thing that must be understood about Angel, though, is she is never, not even once, in touch with her actual reality. To fulfill a school
assignment to describe her home, she describes an estate known as Paradise House on the outskirts of Norley, the town she lives in and hates.

She dwells in her fiction. When she announces she will be a great and famous author, everyone is incensed at her presumption. Naturally, before the film is a half-hour old, Angel has accomplished all of this.

Her romantic novels, written, we are led to believe, without a scintilla of literary merit, capture the public's imagination, especially female
readers, before World War I. What apparently makes her fiction work is her utter belief in the world of her imagination.

She winds up buying Paradise House, brings her bewildered mother there
-- even insisting on piano lessons in a hopeless effort to turn mom into a lady -- fills the house with various cats, dogs and parrots and imports a strange menage a trois into the household.

The latter includes two offspring of the local lord. Nora (Lucy Russell), a plain woman who adores Angel's novels and tries to hide a physical passion for her, joins the household as Angel's assistant and secretary. Meanwhile, Angel falls instantly in love with Nora's black-sheep brother Esme (Michael Fassbender), who has embraced the bohemian lifestyle of the starving painter.

The two are soul mates, passionate about their art. Yet Esme finds solace in the public's rejection of his "smudge" paintings, a kind of impressionism without any true soul. The two enjoy brief marital bliss until war breaks out. He abruptly enlists, which Angel interrupts as abandonment and betrayal.

Our Angel is no angel. At her best she is selfish and delusional. At her worst, downright rude, a social monster who speaks her mind and cares not whom she offends. Her taste is extravagant, just short of dreadful. But she is sincere. She exists in a world designed by her imagination.

Garai attacks the role with absolute relish. For all the histrionics, this is the performance of an actress savvy enough to maintain her character on two distinct levels: There is the highly artificial surface of mercurial mood swings and love for deep-dish theatricality. The other, percolating underneath the surface, is the steely determination,
absolute self-conviction and contempt for all who stand in her way.

Holding his own as her lover, Fassbender gets the cynicism and arrogance that cover up his character's embarrassment at his failure as an artist.
Meanwhile, in a terrific supporting role, Russell is the rock that grounds her mistress in some sort of reality.

As Angel's publisher and his wife, Sam Neill and Charlotte Rampling reflect the division of opinion on Angel's talents. The publisher recognizes the talent others don't. His wife sees only the manipulation and shallowness yet is oddly sympathetic when the delusions crumble.

Ozon surrounds his heroine with costumes, decor and pets to please her imperious moods. Denis Lenoir's widescreen cinematography and Muriel Breton's unruffled editing beautifully express the MGM style of a bygone era. Philippe Rombi's music is perfect faux Max Steiner, being closest to his treasured score for "Now Voyager."

I don't understand all the criticism. Today I am going to watch it in cinema in Holland for the 4th time and I can't get enough of it and I am NOT someone who at all reads or enjoys tabloids or the sort of novels Angel Deverell writes but you can watch this movie at various levels. I love it for the costumes, art direction, cinematography ,music and the spectacular acting, It is NOT miscast at all. It is just perfectly cast. If anything is lacking it will be because of the funding. Ozon had troubles getting it funded and had to shoot big parts in Belgium because he at first did not get enough cooperation in Britain.
The few parts where a background was running was cleverly done as to make it look like a 1940's film which were also never shot on real locations.
Just read the interviews at www.francois-ozon.com and all will be clear and if one still does not agree or like it: too bad for him/her that one cannot enjoy
such pleasures as this movie offers, or that they all take it so seriously.
There is a HUGE multitude of things to enjoy in this movie. Why wasting a life by not being able to enjoy such things?
And for the record; I am mainly interested in really good literature, art, opera, classical music, nature and consider myself to have great taste but/and I know how to enjoy beauty where it exists, which is the essence of life.

Here in Italy the critics loved it!
I've read no negative review so far.