22 October 2010
ANGELA (1997)—A haunting tale of a young girl driven by her religious obsessions into a frightening world of childhood fantasy and superstitious delusion.The story begins by introducing us to ten-year-old Angela (Miranda Stuart Rhyne), her six-year-old sister, Ellie (Charlotte Blythe), and their parents Mae (Anna Levine) and Andrew (John Ventimiglia) as the family moves into a new house in up state New York. Andrew and Mae are washed-up performers looking for a better life and a new start. The family's fortunes or misfortunes are rooted in Mae's increasing mental illness. Andrew is a loving father and devoted husband and he desperately tries to make ends meet and keep the family together and happy.
A dark and compelling Indie film, Angela is carried by the two principal child actresses, Miranda Stuart Rhyne and Charlotte Blythe who both deliver touching and poignant performances. Rhyne, in particular, is engaging as the young protagonist caught in a heavenly struggle between good and evil in a misguided effort to save her mentally ill mother. Precocious, to say the least, Angela has visions of Lucifer coming to take her and her sister away, Angela compels her six-year-old sister, Ellie to endure numerous regimens of “purification” in an attempt to rid themselves of evil, which she believes to be the cause of their mother's mental illness. One of her extreme remedies is for her sister to remain within a circle of dolls and toys until they see a vision of the Virgin Mary come to them.
Written and directed Rebecca Miller, Miller is a bold courageous story teller who takes many chances in Angela; there is a decidedly unsettling scene in a carnival where the two girls are befriended by a man whose intentions are creepy to say the least. It’s unclear as to the man's true intentions until he lures the girls away to a secluded location and kisses Angela and promises to “make her happy.” Angela, naive as to the man’s true motives, mistakes him for a sign from heaven and scares him off with her religious delusions.
The viewer should be warned there is a considerable amount of child nudity in Angela; I don’t understand why people get all exercised when there is a naked child in a film. Quite frankly I’ve secretly always found many of Shirley Temple’s films of the 1930’s to be more suspect, coy, and salacious, than what amounts to basically two kids skinny dipping . . . In reality, kids are naked all the time. Children possess a natural inhibition to being naked. To their way of thinking there’s nothing wrong, wicked or immoral about being naked; it’s a natural state of being—Being naked is a normal part of life. So, why not on film? Rebecca Miller dares to ask this question. I just don’t get it. Okay, so I do get it, but I’m being deliberately dense for the sake of argument. Main stream filmmakers steer away from child nudity like the plague because of the controversy over Brooke Shield’s relatively chaste nude scenes in Pretty Baby. Please, don’t get me started on the unfounded, scurrilous uproar caused by Dakota Fanning in Hounddog. I think the biggest misconception in the public mind is that it is somehow illegal to depict a child naked on American film. That child nudity, even full frontal nudity is somehow analogous to child porn. This is unequivocally and for the record patently untrue! As long as the child is not depicted in a salacious or overtly sexualized situation, child nudity is perfectly legal and is protected by the First Amendment.
Young Charlotte Blythe does most of the heavy lifting as far as getting naked on film. She’s the one depicted in full frontal covered in mud, in the hauntingly beautiful water nymph scene. Miranda Rhyne, not to be out done, takes her turn, staring whimsically in the mirror at her flat little-boy-chest, while she traces the outline of her hoped-for-boobies-to-be in magic marker. A poignant moment made all the more sad because it is never to be.
Angela will never grow up to be a woman. Angela’s death scene is one of the saddest, most powerful scenes I’ve ever watch on film in recent memory. Almost as powerful and memorable as the death of Bambi’s mother, well, maybe not quite, but you get the idea. As Angela’s mother continues to spiral downhill into the depth of madness. Angela seems even more obsesses with finding a spiritual cure. She goes down to the river to baptize herself and her sister. Angela figures if one good dunking washes away your sins, another and another must do even more. What she doesn’t figure on is the river’s rushing current and her own inability to swim. Well, let’s just say John the Baptist is not a lifeguard. Ellie plaintively calls and calls to her sister, “Angela, come back!” But it’s too late . . . it’s forever too late, Angela is never coming back. Ellie now for the first time in her life is free from her sister's delusions has an epiphany of sorts and is free to “fly” and take charge of her own destiny.Angela (1997) ***
