An Angel at My Table

An Angel at My Table

This is the story of a bouncy little ginger who became one of New Zealand’s best writers after surviving a series of ordeals that would have driven most people insane. What’s ironic is that she was already in an asylum, misdiagnosed as schizophrenic and subjected to more than 200 electroshock treatments for no good reason at all except shyness and depression.

Today Janet Frame has written around 20 novels, volumes of poetry, plays and autobiographies. Indeed, the first two books were written and published while she was in a mental hospital; one wonders if the act of writing them didn’t save her life at least give her someplace to put her thoughts in order amid chaos.

Jane Campion’s “An Angel at My Table” tells this story in a way that engaged me from beginning to end. It’s not a hyped-up biopic or a soap opera, but simply the record of a life lived: starting with childhood as an imaginative poor girl loved by working-class parents; continuing through adolescence when she is shuttled into places where society almost kills her. In this film Janet is portrayed by three different actresses (Kerry Fox, Alexia Keogh and Karen Fergusson), who bear amazing physical resemblances to each other as well as to their subject; so we get an impression real unfolding lives go awry strong spirit struggles toward success.

The movie opens in prewar New Zealand, all green and comfortable with Janet’s father working on the railroad, and Janet happily fitting into a family including brother and sisters whom she adores. She’s kind of peculiar looking child with bad teeth and wild red hair but there’s something about her.

She has a poet’s imagination: When required to write verse for school, she knows exactly what words she wants to use and will not change one on any authority’s say so.

She grows up slowly; doesn’t date or have much of a social life. In school, she is friends with the outcasts brains, nonconformists, artsy types but envies the popular girls and their boyfriends. It’s a world she doesn’t expect ever to understand. When she goes off to college, she remains a loner: shy, peculiar, keeping herself to herself; confiding everything in a journal. Then when she gets her first job as a schoolteacher, she cannot think of anything to say to the other teachers and so does not join them for tea. One day the inspector comes to visit her class and she clams up.

It’s essentially is panic attack but one dumb diagnosis leads to another and Janet winds up being committed to an insane asylum where for eight years unspeakable horrors are visited on her by people who should know better including shock treatments threats lobotomy from doctors nurses attendants who never once recognize that what they’re dealing with here is shyness depression not madness.

Her books keep this lady’s brain in check and allow her to gain freedom her dad, who is terrified of the medical professionals, swears he won’t have her sent back to the asylum again and eventually, in her thirties, she receives a grant to go abroad and hangs out with bohemian writers and painters in Spain. She even loses her virginity at last, and although she will always be a bit strange, a loner wrapped up in herself, we can see that she begins to grow more comfortable in the world.

The director here is Campion; Laura Jones wrote the script. Last year Campion made “Sweetie,” about a family nearly torn apart by an anarchic sister. I had to fight that film. It left me cold at first but haunted me enough that I came back twice more and fell in love. “An Angel at My Table” does not ask you to fight it: It is told simply enough for children to follow along, yet it’s completely engrossing. Yes, it looks good; yes, it acts well; no, it doesn’t wear its virtues on its sleeve. It tells its story gently and with great humanity this movie held me as few movies ever do.

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