Angel

Angel (2007) is François Ozon's lush costume melodrama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. In Edwardian England a grocer's daughter named Angel Deverell writes overheated romance novels — and to everyone's surprise, they top the bestseller lists.

Fame arrives almost overnight. Angel buys a crumbling country estate, fills it with peacocks, a harp and gaudy paintings, and plays the grande dame she was never born to be. Romola Garai carries the whole thing, sliding from wide-eyed delight into proud self-deception. Around her: a publisher played by Sam Neill, a struggling painter named Esmé (Michael Fassbender) she clings to, and his icy sister (Charlotte Rampling) who sees right through her. The higher Angel climbs, the less she lets herself notice.

Ozon adapted it from Elizabeth Taylor's novel, and he refuses to mock his heroine for her terrible taste — he aches for her instead. The film looks deliberately artificial, all painted backdrops and Technicolor swoon, and that fakeness is the point. Stream Angel (2007) online on iFILM.