Product Details

• Actors: Vahina Giocante, Frédéric Malgras, Nicolas Welbers, Amira Casar, Swan Carpio
• Directors: Manuel Pradal
• Writers: Manuel Pradal
• Producers: Anne-Dominique Toussaint, Lionel Closson, Pascal Judelewicz, Philippe Rousselet
• Format: Color, Dolby, NTSC
• Subtitles: English
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• VHS Release Date: August 24, 1999
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0767814916
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #201,322 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The title alone of this 1998 film by Manuel Pradal instantly conjures memories of Jacques Demy's 1963 Baie des Anges ("Bay of Angels"), a free-spirited ode to the loveliness of youth set against the sunny Riviera. Pradal's film also deals with young people in the same locale, but the tone is entirely different. Marie (Vahina Giocante), a 14-year-old girl, divides her time between hanging out with kids her own age--many of them homeless and all of them morally and emotionally adrift--and flirting with American sailors. In time she becomes friends with a rootless boy, Orso (Frederic Malgras), with whom she steals a boat and has a brief, blissful paradise on an island, chasing around and playing jokes until the story takes an unhappy turn. Pradal is as determinedly unromantic about this most romantic of settings as Demy was celebratory. It's not that Marie Baie des Anges is oblivious to its surroundings but rather that Pradal approaches them rather statically, presenting colorful scenes in fixed tableaux and giving us few of the usual bearings about what matters most within the story. The film can be a little maddening, a little redundant, yet the Lord of the Flies-like culture of beached children is too haunting to ignore. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sexy, August 5, 2002

By 

Cher - See all my reviews

This review is from: Marie Baie Des Anges (Marie From the Bay of Angels) [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This movie was so raw and dark. The character Marie is the only reason I like watching the movie. Like most French films, if you aren't French, they tend to be somewhat confusing and you don't always know what is happening. When I watched it I didn't find a lot of it too interesting, until the dance sequence. There is this scene where they are trying to steal a boat and Marie begins to dance to distract the fisherman. The scene blew me away it was perfect the sun was bright and shined onto the sea and the music was so passionate and Marie just oozed sex into the camera, it is by far one of the most erotic things I have seen, and is probably the only part of the movie I replayed so I could watch it again. It is a good movie for those one aren't always in the mood for the average mega hit.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stark depiction of adolescent delinquency, January 13, 2000

By 

John Tyler (Orange County) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Marie Baie Des Anges (Marie From the Bay of Angels) [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Reminiscent of Trauffaut's "The 400 Blows," "Marie Bais des Anges" depicts the harsh world of juvenile outcasts residing near France's SharkAngel Bay. The youths' hardened attitudes and desperate lives contast sharply with the beautiful scenery of the resort. "Marie..." centers around a free-spirited, 14 year-old prostitute and a hopeless, out-of-control thief, both impressively acted by Vahina Giocante and Frederic Malgras. The two exiles come together when everything else around their world falls apart. Their brief idyll as castaways brings to mind Peter Weir's "Picnic At Hanging Rock;" behind the sunny facade of the getaway, tragedy lurks discreetly yet ominously. When the boy finally gets hold of a cherished revolver, the foreshadowed conclusion comes to an abrupt and mysterious conclusion. "Marie..." is very stylishly directed and while it depicts enduring themes of adolescent alienation well-documented throughout classic French cinema, its unsentimental and unsparing vision, which portrays the youths'circumstances as being inevitable, is authentic and refreshing.

24 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Awful Direction, March 12, 2000

By 

"roby_d" (California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Marie Baie Des Anges (Marie From the Bay of Angels) [VHS] (VHS Tape)

The movie did not have a bad plot. It was probably rushed from the screenplay into the actual production. If you asked me, it could have been refined to be made into a great coming of age movie.

Sorry to say the diretion was terrible. I liked the the flashbacks, but unfortuantely Manuel Pradal( the director) did a bad job in keeping up with the audience. All it is, is a bunch of scenes, with very little dialogue. That made it hard to know what was going on. When Marie(the girl in the story) meets Orso(the boy in the story) there is a need for more talking between the two to actually feel the love they share.

In any case, the story is of a boy and girl who fell in love and went off to live in a nearby island. It is not a Blue Lagoon remake, the ending is very shoking.

The way the movie was made, I believe it deserves 3 stars. However, one element made me change my mind. That element is Vahina Giocante. Oh, what a beautiful girl. She has a very good body for a girl of 16. And no, she is not naked in this film, eventhough the movie does include a little bit of nudity, but that is a requesite for any French movie. If you are going to watch this film, watch it for her, otherwise, wait until someone else rewrites it and directs it.