The Dreamlife of Angels (1999)

Elodie Bouchez and Natacha Regnier shared the best actress prize at Cannes last year for their tender, fluid performances as scrappy young women knocking around the French city of Lille in search of work and human connection. Dark, gamine Bouchez plays Isa, the tougher, more resilient one; pale Régnier builds in intensity as the more passive, wistful Marie, whose violent sexual attraction to a cold nightclub owner (Gregoire Colin) ruptures her relationship with Isa and pushes her to desperation. This is the lovely first feature from writer-director Erick Zonca, and his empathetic evocation of the unglamorized everyday details of female friendship -- nights spent flirting with guys, time squandered doing nothing -- overcomes the hapless so-what-ness of his characters. In an American indie, the two girls would be cute slackers; in ''Dreamlife,'' they're imbued with the inchoate sadness of feminine existential loneliness.

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