L’Ange – first look review

A dis­turb­ing blank­ness is at the heart of Luis Ortega’s fic­tion­alised por­trait of Car­los Rob­le­do Puch, the real Argen­tin­ian ser­i­al killer who the press dubbed ​‘The Angel of Death’ because of his cheru­bic appear­ance. The young man with the gold­en curls and the dead­ly aim was arrest­ed in 1972, hav­ing just turned 20, with 11 homi­cides and over 40 thefts to his name.

Ortega’s por­trait makes no attempt to con­demn or even under­stand his subject’s moti­va­tion. Aid­ed by lead actor Loren­zo Fer­ro who slides into the part with serene sociopa­thy, he instead depicts a life less ordi­nary, lean­ing into a ghoul­ish sense of humour.

Peri­od detail is fore­most with the Buenos Aires of 1971 and ​’72 look­ing sun­ni­ly at odds with the crim­i­nal vio­lence brew­ing. Car­los saun­ters up a path to a large house. The sun is out and he is wear­ing dou­ble den­im and a thick yel­low top. He tells us in voiceover that he doesn’t under­stand why peo­ple don’t want to be free. He was born a thief. This is the extent of L’Ange’s psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­fil­ing and now we’re into the action.

Car­los breaks into the house, but rather than des­per­ate­ly ran­sack­ing it, he heads to the lounge, selects a record and dances with tidy foot­work to Span­ish dis­co. Tak­ing rel­ish from crim­i­nal enter­prise is a recur­ring motif of this char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion. Lat­er, when he and smoul­der­ing­ly hand­some bud­dy-part­ner Ramon (Chi­no Darín) break into a jew­ellery shop, he berates Ramon for being too hasty and not enjoy­ing the moment. ​“You’re alive!” he exclaims, at which Ramon pro­ceeds to bag the swag with com­i­cal slow­ness. Like­wise, when Ramon smash­es a bar­man for call­ing him a ​“fag” Car­los whoops for joy, com­ing ful­ly alive wher­ev­er the social con­tract is aban­doned and wild­ness reigns.

The friend­ship of Ramon and Car­los is ignit­ed through a courtship of sen­su­al vio­lence at the reform school they attend. Car­los uses a blow­torch on the back of Ramon’s neck, Ramon strikes back and a union weld­ed by com­mit­ment to anti-social urges is born. There is some­thing else at play too. ​“You look like Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe,” says Ramon as the pair gaze into the jew­ellery shop mir­ror drink­ing in how Car­los looks in huge dia­mond ear­rings. Sub­jects are not so much explored as del­i­cate­ly pre­sent­ed, so this mat­ter of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is sim­ply a fris­son in the mix of a big­ger slice of life.

The mur­ders them­selves are framed as instinc­tive reac­tions by Car­los when­ev­er a per­son stum­bles on a scene of his rob­bery. He hears a noise, his arm flies up, a bul­let is loosed, a per­son lies dead or bleed­ing. Ortega’s cam­era always goes to Ferro’s face for a reac­tion after a shot is fired. This face always con­veys a blend of sur­prise and ela­tion. Then he moves on, con­tin­u­ing unhur­ried and unpan­icked to steal what he came to steal.

L’Ange is woven togeth­er by dif­fer­ent nar­ra­tive threads that are all giv­en equal weight whether they are every­day, like dat­ing, or ter­ri­ble, like killing. Car­los is shown as com­ing from a nor­mal fam­i­ly and is more or less adopt­ed by Ramon and his crime fam­i­ly. A mat­ter-of-fact tone cre­at­ed by Ortega’s refusal to drama­tise any event. Left out are the more vis­cer­al­ly ter­ri­ble crimes. The real Car­los shot at a baby and the real Ramon (real name Jorge Anto­nio Ibañez) raped a 16-year-old girl.

Real­i­ty-inspired-fic­tion is under no oblig­a­tion to be faith­ful to its source, and often doing so leads to sti­fled works of art. In his inter­pre­ta­tion of the sto­ry of The Angel of Death, Orte­ga has cre­at­ed his own vision of Oliv­er Stone’s Nat­ur­al Born Killers, a death­ly irrev­er­ent, scan­dalous­ly amus­ing chron­i­cle of an irre­deemable per­son who is still banged up in jail, hold­ing the record of longest serv­ing Argen­tine pris­on­er at 46 years and counting.

L’Ange is an extra­or­di­nary show­case for Loren­zo Fer­ro who chan­nels a cal­cu­lat­ing intel­li­gence with­in his breezy gold­en boy façade. Every line of dia­logue scans as a delib­er­ate advance of his will, and yet he has the mag­net­ism of a per­son con­tent­ed­ly liv­ing their dream. His per­for­mance holds on to the mys­tery of why even though he is phys­i­cal­ly present in near­ly every scene. Fer­ro looks uncan­ni­ly like his sub­ject, and is a com­pelling, eerie avatar for the idea that you just can’t know who a per­son tru­ly is.