Stealing Angel

The 24th feature from Marseille’s prolific Robert Guédiguian (La fete continue!) is a lovely proletarian comedy. Maria (Ariane Ascaride) works as a cleaner, care giver, cook and counsellor for several seniors in her neighbourhood. She’s beloved and trusted. So it’s easy to sneak in a few personal items on to their bills, even to help herself to a pre-signed cheque… It’s not easy to make ends meet, and for the most part she’s channeling the extra funds into piano lessons for her grandson, who will competing for a scholarship soon. Of course it’s only a matter of time before her thievery is discovered. But the fall-out is not so predictable…

Guédiguian — who works with his own stable of actors and crew, and rarely ventures beyond his native Marseille — can be compared to Mike Leigh or Shane Meadows in the UK, or perhaps how John Sayles used to operate in the US. His films may be regionally focussed, but they unfurl an expansive social canvas. They’re about working class folks getting by, and while Maria and other characters here sometimes behave in unethical ways, the director observes their actions with a good deal of sympathy and understanding. It’s such a warm, engaging, humane movie and it feels almost effortless.

A beautiful fable, distilled in music and grace and light.

Le Monde

Over the course of a short hour and forty minutes that flows as gently as a peaceful summer, the characters experience stories of love and heartbreak, quarrel and then reconnect, admit their faults and make amends. In short, nothing spectacular happens, except life in all its banal and beautiful aspects… It is always good to revisit this humane cinematic space.

François Lévesque, Le Devoir