Film of woman's rise and fall ends Berlin festival

BERLIN, Feb 17 (Reuters) Scarlett O'Hara springs to mind when watching ''Angel'', a film by France's Francois Ozon about a young woman who rises to fame before falling from grace, and who commands love and loathing in equal measure.

The picture was the last of 22 films in competition to screen at the Berlin film festival, a fitting end to a selection where female leads grabbed the limelight while many of the movies themselves were quickly forgotten.

British beauty Romola Garai plays Angel, who grows up in poverty in the north of England but never falters from her goals until she has everything she dreamed of -- a stately home called Paradise, fame, fortune and love.

How long she can maintain the dream is another matter, however, when the outbreak of war separates her from her husband and threatens to undermine everything she worked for.Based on a novel by writer Elizabeth Taylor, Ozon deliberately gives his film a 1930s look, and the acting is heavily stylised to suit the period.

The stars of ''Angel'' will be joined on the Berlin red carpet by at least some winners of the major awards, as they head into the prize ceremony this evening.

Critical reaction to the 2007 selection has been generally cool, although three strong films yesterday lifted the gloom.

Variety magazine described Czech movie ''I Served the King of England'', about a man who works his way up from lowly waiter to millionaire hotelier before eventually becoming an inmate of a communist prison, as ''beguiling''.

Britain's ''Hallam Foe'', directed by David Mackenzie and starring Jamie Bell as an outcast voyeur obsessed with his mother's death, drew loud applause at its press screening.

And ''Lost in Beijing'', by up-and-coming female Chinese director Li Yu, won plaudits for its piercing look at sexual mores, corruption, greed and isolation in the booming city.

Li ran a risk by bringing the movie to Berlin, as the version shown was not approved by censors. Another Chinese director, Lou Ye, was banned from making films for five years for showing the unapproved ''Summer Palace'' in Cannes last year.

FAVOURITES Among the favourites to win the Golden Bear this year were Germany's ''The Counterfeiters,'' based on a real Nazi plot to disrupt Britain's economy by flooding it with counterfeit banknotes made by Jewish craftsmen in a concentration camp.

Audiences cheered the often hilarious ''Irina Palm'', starring British singer Marianne Faithfull as a grandmother who becomes a sex worker in London's seedy Soho, while French actress Marion Cotillard shone as Edith Piaf in ''La Vie En Rose''.

Other actresses singled out were Germany's Nina Hoss in ''Yella'' and China's Yu Nan in ''Tuya's Marriage''.

Critics liked Brazilian director Cao Hamburger's ''The Year My Parents Went on Vacation'' and Robert De Niro's CIA drama ''The Good Shepherd'', one of several Hollywood movies already released in the United States that used Berlin as a European launchpad.

Reviewers also praised French director Andre Techine's ''Witnesses'' and countryman Jacques Rivette's ''Don't Touch the Axe''.

US stars Sharon Stone and Jennifer Lopez appeared in two critical duds. Stone starred in ''When a Man Falls in the Forest'' and Lopez in ''Bordertown'', a drama based on the real-life murder of young Mexican women in a town near the US border.

REUTERS SP VC1902