Anna (Virginie Ledoyen) arrives at the Saint Ange building, tasked with cleaning the old orphanage: just in time to see it momentarily empty. And, just in time, to receive, from one of the departing girls, an admonition "stay away from scary children..."
The young girl (with a less than idyllic past) remains in the company of Judith (Lou Dillon) an old janitor and a girl who grew up in the institution and, apparently, is unstable in her reasoning: so much so that she appears schizophrenic.
Anna, upset by the constant references to strange happenings in the past at Saint Ange, begins to take care of the only girl left at the orphanage: which casts doubt on the behavior of the elderly janitor...
For Anna, weighed down not only by work and tension but also by the fact that she is pregnant, a long and interminable journey into delirium begins: from the moment she senses, inside the huge building, strange presences; presences that seem to come out of her nightmares and materialize in footsteps and mysterious noises coming from the long (and empty) corridors and the gloomy (and dreary) dark rooms...
The girl, now at the end of her rope, attacks the janitor to find out what happened within those walls: at the time of World War II, hundreds and hundreds of children came to the orphanage; but the small number of doctors could not curb the needs of the little ones, destined for an atrocious fate...
The truth lies behind a mirror-what lurks in that "hidden" room?
Where does that freight elevator leading, down (traveling downhill) to the antechamber of hell, lead the fearful and determined Anna?
Saint Ange represents the directorial debut of Pascal Laugier: a genre film enthusiast.
Debut wanted by Christophe Gans who, on the set of The Covenant of Wolves, used the director for backstage filming.
Laugier had long ventilated the idea of bringing to the screen a script set on a cursed orphanage: until Christophe Gans read the script and was fascinated...
And with good reason, since the film, while placing itself in the genre of "cursed houses," exudes all the passion of the young and promising author: starting with the idea of tying the story to three female protagonists, and continuing with a "majestic" set design, where the enormity of the building and the ample size of the corridors and rooms bring to mind that jewel of the thrill ride that is Suspiria. And not by chance, for there are many more references to Italian horror cinema than can be grasped on a first viewing.
The presence of Catriona MacColl and the ending with iris-less eyes harkens directly back to Fulci's Afterlife...
And the lights, often of the tricolor type, maintain a "Bavian" atmosphere throughout the progress of the story.
Laugier's passion, on the other hand, is not the result of interpretation (or misinterpretation) of the various contexts: as is also evident from the backstage, in which the author mentions his reference models, among which, by "narrative" setting, The Oters...
The story is professionally interpreted by the fine performers, and the camera does not skimp on refined and unusual fades...
Saint Ange stands as one of the best representatives of suggested fear, as an unmissable opportunity to begin a journey, which starts from the everyday and leads us into the dream, tinged with a strong sense of melancholy and a single certainty: we are alone on this planet, abandoned to our fears and, vainly/desperately, anchored to illusory hopes...
The only jarring note is the ending: of the "coded" kind and left to the viewers' imagination; although perhaps, upon closer inspection, those iris-less eyes unconsciously harken back to the world of dreams and nightmares. To the world of fairy tales and night terrors: when, as children, before falling asleep in our ears flowed "hypnagogic" words such as "bogeyman," "werewolf," "wicked witch," "ogre..."
Review by Undying1
