Something Trivial: It has been years since the actors worked together in a movie. The last one was The Brotherhood of the Wolf - Ulliel was just a bit player way back then...

It's also cool to note that both actors, in one way or another, credit French filmmaker Francois Ozon as contributing to their becoming actors. Renier was cast in Ozon's Criminal Lovers, which was definitely one of his most difficult roles, while Ulliel credits the young filmmaker with discovering him.

A Final Question: As a 'spoiler' of sorts, we included a hypothetical question (purely for the sake of discussion and nothing else)...

Are there others actors worthy of the roles? Let's speculate and have some fun!

Gaspard Ulliel is Xas: How do you play an angel who acts more human than divine?

French actor Gaspard Ulliel may be young, but he is certainly ready to tackle roles that might have been given to older, more experienced actors.


After two Cezar nominations for Most Promising Actor, Ulliel grabbed the much-coveted award on his third nomination, courtesy of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement. Definitely one of the most popular and well-placed actors in France, the former male model has already built an impressive resume with leading roles in Hannibal Rising, Strayed, A Very Long Engagement, Jacquo le Croquant and The Last Days, among others.

The actor certainly has no qualms about getting naked if the role requires it nor does he show hesitation about playing unconventional characters. In fact, he seems to relish the challenge, considering challenging roles as an opportunity to further his career and improve his craft.

In the movie Strayed, which co-starred the vibrant and enigmatic Emmanuelle Beart, even critics at the New York Times had nothing but praise for the young Ulliel.

Says critic Karen Durbin:

GASPARD ULLIEL is French cinema's rising star, repeatedly honored in the category of most promising actor. But playing his first leading role, opposite Emmanuelle Béart in André Téchiné's ''Strayed,'' he seems fully arrived, showing us the facets of a complex and mercurial character like a blackjack dealer shuffling a deck of cards.

Even if Ulliel's initial foray in English-language movies (Hannibal Rising) failed to meet studio's expectations, the French star beat a strong bunch of talented English actors in their very own territory...

With his popularity at an all-time high, Ulliel now has four new movies in various stages of production. It includes a feature with the very promising Clemence Poesy called La Troisième partie du monde.

While Gaspard ultimately wants to become an accomplished filmmaker, his fans would probably prefer having him take roles in as many movies as he can for as long as he wants.

There are of course plenty of young, aspiring filmmakers, including some who made it really big working behind the camera (Francois Ozon for one ), but at 24, maybe Ulliel can be persuaded to wait for a defining role or two before leaving the spotlight and settling into the dubious comforts of the director's chair.


The Character: Playing Xas may be the biggest challenge in Ulliel's acting career to date. It is not, however, without controversy: the character, as depicted in the novel, has a relationship with the vintner - and it goes beyond the platonic...

Why so much fuzz about this fictional character? For one thing, Xas is an angel whose philosophical discourses have set him on a collision course with God. He is forsaken but unlike other fallen angels, goes on to deal with Lucifer in a way never before seen in film or book ...

Knox certainly has very vivid imagination and she apparently focused a great deal of her creative energies in developing this character.


In Nina Auerbach's book review, she described Xas thus:

In the course of their meetings and missings, Xas never does become a counselor, although he is, in turn, Sobran's tempter, friend, lover, child, succubus and storyteller. And he is always a haunting physical presence, draining Sobran's desire away from his wife, mistress and children, even from his thriving vineyard. In ''The Vintner's Luck,'' meetings with an angel provide neither guidance nor illumination nor moral clarification: they are simply so consuming, physically and imaginatively, that they make ordinary life impossible.

Xas is one of the best angels since William Blake's. He is not a pet, like Clarence in ''It's a Wonderful Life,'' or a pest, like the angel who crashes through the ceiling in Tony Kushner's ''Angels in America.'' His nature partakes simultaneously of the devilish and the sublime. The heaven and hell he describes, the afterlife he comes to understand, do not contradict the traditional imagery, yet Xas's descriptions of them exude a cruel strangeness. This vessel of fragile power is indeed a messenger -- the Greek origin of the word ''angel'' -- but he cannot make us, or himself, understand his message.

In a way, Xas seems to be the author of the novel as well as its subject. ''I hate the connective tissue in a story,'' he proclaims loftily -- and so, apparently, does Knox. ''The Vintner's Luck'' is constructed episodically, with its principal action a series of revelations. When these revelations concern Xas they are chilling, but when they touch the human characters they are surprisingly perfunctory.

Powerful and strong-willed yet capable of showing intense feelings of tenderness and love, Xas is a character you'll remember long after you've finished Knox's novel. Xas's ability to charm his way into someone's heart is equaled by his tendency towards notoriety.

Lastly, you might be surprised to learn that Knox's ideas about how angels should behave and how they interact with God run somewhat contrary to the usual guardian angel behavior we're more accustomed to...

tMF's take: As an avid fan of fiction novels, it's such a thrill when the right actors are chosen for the most important roles. Casting can be a difficult and painful process, and we applaud those behind the selection for choosing the talented and appealing Gaspard Ulliel to play Xas.