AllMovie

Ainsi meurent les anges shows how a "dream deferred" can become a nightmare, how a stolen past can make the present impossible and render modernity untenable, how history can become paralyzed. It is a film about the loss of innocence - by an individual and by an entire generation. These lost possibilities, these foregone selves, irrecoverable yet unforgettable, are the angels of the title. They are not the absolute, unhearing angels of Rilke's Duino Elegies or even the sympathetic onlookers of Wim Wender's Wings of Desire; they are aspects of ourselves, fragile as human hope.