Sorry Angel

An exquisite tale about coming of age and coming to terms.

What's bracing about Sorry Angel is that it refuses to allow the specificity of its characters — specifically drawn and superbly played — to be obscured or flattened by the drama of terminal illness. Neither man is made nicer or more palatable than he has to be.

There are moments of joy and humor throughout, and the film insists on feeling those emotions, just as much as it does grief.

Though the film resists easy categorisation, it often tumbles along like queer screwball, which chimes with its original French title: Plaire, Aimer et Courir Vite, or Give Pleasure, Love and Run Fast. It’s a fine manifesto, and Honoré’s film excels at all three.

For all its vivid period atmosphere and striking scenes, there is a meandering quality that keeps the film from being truly involving. It's not the lack of sentiment, but perhaps the absence of any sort of momentum.

Honoré’s scenes feel at once composed and curiously mundane, as if he’s trying to take the precision of his earlier work and mix it with a more realist impulse — or, if we’re being less charitable, as if he’s trying to will his aesthetic into something more “mature.”

It is often poignant and humorous but also placid and complacent, with performances bordering on the self-regarding and even faintly insufferable.