''Saint Ange'', also known as ''House of Voices'', is a 2004 French-Romanian

horror film Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes. Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apoca ...

written and directed by

Pascal Laugier Pascal Laugier (; born 16 October 1971) is a French screenwriter and film director. Career Laugier is a former assistant to director Christophe Gans, having directed the "making-of" documentary about Gans' 2001 film, ''Brotherhood of the Wolf' ...

. It is Laugier's feature film debut. The film stars

Virginie Ledoyen Virginie Fernández (born 15 November 1976), known by her stage name Virginie Ledoyen (), is a French actress who has appeared in French, British and American films. Life and career Ledoyen was born in Aubervilliers, the daughter of Olga, a res ...

Catriona MacColl Catriona MacColl (born 3 October 1954) is an English actress who has worked extensively in both film and television across Europe. She is best known for her work in Italian horror films, as she has appeared in Lucio Fulci's ''City of the Living ...

Lou Doillon Lou Doillon (born 4 September 1982) is a French-English singer, actress and model. Personal life Doillon is the daughter of French writer/director Jacques Doillon and English actress/singer Jane Birkin. She has six brothers and sisters: Ka ...

, and Dorina Lazăr.

Plot

In 1958, Anna Jurin accepts a job as a housekeeper of Saint Ange, a rusty and isolated orphanage located in the

French Alps The French Alps are the portions of the Alps mountain range that stand within France, located in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur regions. While some of the ranges of the French Alps are entirely in France, others, such as ...

and owned by Madam Francard. The last batch of children have been sent elsewhere shortly after the mysterious death of a boy in the bathroom, which tarnishes the orphanage's reputation and threatens its closure. Other than Anna, the orphanage is now populated by only two people: the long-time cook Helenka and an adult orphan, Judith, who suffers from a mental disability and claims that there are other, unseen, children in the location. Throughout her stay, Anna experiences apparent supernatural phenomena. However, Helenka dismisses her worries as mere hallucinations, especially after she learns that Anna is pregnant due to a

gang rape Gang rape, also called serial gang rape, group rape, or multiple perpetrator rape in scholarly literature,Ullman, S. E. (2013). 11 Multiple perpetrator rape victimization. Handbook on the Study of Multiple Perpetrator Rape: A Multidisciplinary Re ...

, a fact that she tries to hide at first. Anna learns that Judith is one of the many sent to Saint Ange in 1946 as a

war orphan An orphan (from the el, ορφανός, orphanós) is a child whose parents have died. In common usage, only a child who has lost both parents due to death is called an orphan. When referring to animals, only the mother's condition is usuall ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

; because of shortages of supplies and logistics, Judith is the only survivor. Despite this explanation, Anna suspects that the orphanage deliberately killed and hid the children. She gains the trust of Judith by befriending and calming her when her kittens are apparently drowned by Helenka, enough for her to disclose that the children inhabit an area somewhere behind a mirror in bathroom, revealed to be an abandoned dormitory. Helenka tries to prevent them from heading to the area, but Judith knocks her unconscious. The two women proceed to the dormitory and find remains of toys and rotten food. Judith realizes that the children had really died and begs Anna to stop searching, but the latter insists on continuing and boards an elevator heading to the underground. Anna arrives at a sterile, hospital-like structure with clean white walls and brightly lit lamps. She is confronted by the children who rise from a series of murky baths, who surround her. Anna goes into a sudden labor and is helped to deliver the baby by the children but the newborn infant is stillborn when the stillbirth killed Anna. Sometime later, Francard and her assistant search for Anna in the underground, which is now damp, dark, and rust-walled. They find Anna and her baby on the floor, both dead. Deciding to leave them there, the two head upstairs to leave the premises alongside Helenka and Judith; it is implied that Anna has been hallucinating the phenomena due to the stress, as she is revealed to be the true culprit for the drowning of the kittens. However, before they leave, Judith throws away her medication, as Anna advised her earlier, and peeks into Anna's former bedroom, where she sees her and her baby, now as spirits of Saint Ange, alongside the dead children. Francard comes back for Judith and the film ends as the room is seen empty.

Language

According to

Christophe Gans Christophe Gans (born 11 March 1960) is a French film director, producer, and screenwriter who specializes in horror and fantasy movies. Life and career Gans was born in Antibes, France. As a teenager, he spent a large portion of his time crea ...

, the film was shot both in French and English. The Canadian DVD has both cuts of the film.

Cast

as Anna Jurin *

as Judith *

as Francard * Dorina Lazăr as Helenka * Virginie Darmon as Mathilde * Jérôme Soufflet as Daniel * Marie Herry as Marie * Éric Prat as an unnamed social services worker

Production

Some thought that

was actually five or six months pregnant during filming. The star in fact wore a prosthetic pregnancy for the shoot and spoke of the hard bodily work and physical discomfort this entailed: "We shot scenes in stifling heat, with my hair sticking to me, false blood on my face, and the latex stomach melting."

References

External links