An Angel at My Table (1990)

User Rating:

7.4/10   

Director:

Jane Campion

Writers:

Janet Frame (autobiographies To the Is-Land, An Angel at My Table and The Envoy from Mirror City)
Laura Jones (writer)

Release Date:

20 September 1990 (Australia)

Genre:

Biography | Drama

Plot:

Janet Frame grows up in a poor family with lots of brothers and sisters. Already at an early age she is different than the other kids...

Plot Keywords:

Author | Based On Autobiography | Insanity | Skinny Dipping | Female Frontal Nudity

Awards:

13 wins

Cast

Kerry Fox	...	Janet Frame
Alexia Keogh	...	Janet Frame as adolescent
Karen Fergusson	...	Janet Frame as a child
Iris Churn	...	Mother
Jessie Mune	...	Baby Janet
Kevin J. Wilson	...	Father
Francesca Collins	...	Baby Jane
Melina Bernecker	...	Myrtle
Mark Morrison	...	Bruddie Frame as child
Katherine Murray-Cowper	...	Young Isabel
Mark Thomson	...	Billy Delaware
Brenda Kendall	...	Miss Botting
Paul Moffat	...	Dis McIvor
Blair Hutchison	...	Bully Boy
David McAuslan	...	Bully Boy

Runtime:

158 min

Country:

UK | Australia | New Zealand

Language:

English | Spanish

Colour:

Colour

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Certification:

Netherlands:12 | South Korea:15 | UK:15 | Australia:M (DVD rating) | Argentina:13 | Australia:PG | Finland:K-10 | Germany:12 | Singapore:M18 | Sweden:11 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Auckland, New Zealand

Company:

Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)

Trivia:

Kerry Fox gained two stone for her role as Janet Frame. She managed this by drinking liters of Coca-Cola, eating packets of chocolate biscuits and going on the pill.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Zomergasten: (#7.5)" (1994)

Soundtrack:

Somebody Stole My Gal

Untethered Butterfly

Superficially, this is a sort of "My Brilliant Career," meets "A Beautiful Mind."

It features one of the most extraordinary actresses, new to me. I saw her in "Intmacy" and had to find more. It is made by a talented and sometimes engaging filmmaker who explores how women are haunted. It is about a writer whose books don't grab me, but whose story does. She believed herself haunted.

The problem is that these three songs from different souls don't overlap that much.

Frame created written images that were teased out of a struggle with life, one that infused her. Her sanity came from the writing. She didn't write about insanity and marginalization, she wrote from them to counter and co-opt them somewhat. This engages the reader because most of us are afraid to go as deeply into the darkness as these visions indicate.

That's a different thing entirely than the story Campion has chosen to give us, which is about all the external agency that surrounded her. I cannot think of an instance where the literary kite and the cinematic string are in such different dimensions. Sure, its an interesting story that someone's light survived, I suppose. But we never see that light, or the ledges that were climbed, or the images that were carried out for us.

What's left for Fox to do is emote visually. She does an extraordinary job, quite apart from the fact that it is ineffective in this container. I really do think she's something — another of those Australian/New Zealand crowd that just seem to have something that is rare elsewhere.

She and the girls who play her younger selves are redheads. That's not at all a cinematic device, though it is used cleverly to mend the three actresses. Frame actually had that Clarabelle hair.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.