The Dreamlife of Angels

(Columbia TriStar)

Erick Zonca's first feature is the story of two young working-class women in Lille, France, and how they cope with lives that are neither dreamlike nor angelic. Twenty-year-old vagabond Isa (an indomitable and toothy Elodie Bouchez) moves in with Marie (a melancholy and explosive Natacha Régnier) and the two strike up a relationship with a pair of leather-clad, beer-swilling bouncers, even as Isa starts to bond with the comatose teenage girl who once lived in their apartment. In the end, Zonca falters from his realist rigor and forgoes the note-perfect characterizations for melodrama and glib social commentary -- but it's a small failing in a movie that reminds us the unexamined life of real people in real places is well worth filming.