Angel of Mine

Angel of Mine

Noomi Rapace stars as Lizzie, a former wife and estranged mother who is disappearing in “Angel of Mine.” With Mike (Luke Evans), she shares custody of her preteen son Thomas (Finn Little), and in the film’s first exchange scene, he tells her, “He could feel your darkness.” She never recovered from a loss seven years ago, which took away everything from her: she can’t move on from the relationship by dating anyone new, and she consistently skips work at a cosmetics store. Lizzie is spiraling downward at fast speed–and this film by director Kim Farrant wants us to sit with that character study for a while–before it drops it into a parent’s nightmare.

It eventually unveils details about Lizzie’s sadness very slowly, and about the person she’s mourning, like when we see her lighting up a birthday cake for nobody in the room. In this first act especially,”Angel of Mine” is undeniably moody and its foreboding soundscape and dour color palette make it feel somewhat out of reach at first. But since the story is based on showing Lizzie’s darkness it feels one-note in certain instances; we only get to know her at arm’s length rather than being invited into her pain.

But Farrant’s skill as a storyteller and Rapace’s haunting performance elevate the story and steer it toward its delicately bonkers concept: Lizzie becomes obsessed with Lola (Annika Whiteley), Claire’s (Yvonne Strahovski) neighbor’s little daughter. She starts appearing at Claire’s house after seeing Lola at a party under the guise of possibly wanting to buy the house before Claire’s family moves to Perth and when her son befriends Lola’s brother and they have playdates, that gives Lizzie even more access to Lola, whom she tries to talk to one on one with.

In a development that Rapace sells with great desperation in her eyes, Lizzie believes Lola is actually her deceased daughter Rosie who died in a hospital fire days after being born. It’s an impossible claim birthed from catastrophic grief and denied by Lizzie, but script from Luke Davies and David Regal plants a seed of plausibility that’s hard to resist. As Lizzie starts to exhibit inappropriate behavior toward Lola, the story becomes more magnetic; her suffering becomes all the more tangible. She never smiles except when she is with Lola; she never looks like she is made of glass except when she is with Lola.

The way Farrant cuts the film makes us continually shocked at how far Lizzie’s reckless lack of boundaries takes her, like when she shows up at Lola’s ballet recital and watches it from backstage. But Farrant isn’t interested in the salacious parts of this story; underneath the plot there lies an abundance of raw pain, and whenever Farrant digs into that, the saga goes from moody to emotionally visceral. Additionally, she doesn’t judge any characters (which might turn off viewers seeking easy thrills or someone they can readily despise as a monster).

Claire eventually catches wind of Lizzie’s fixation and Strahovski delivers accordingly.

She comes in a lower register than Rapace but just as hard, especially at showing someone trying to hold pity and anger together in such a nightmare. But there’s something about Lizzie telling Claire what happened it utterly disarms her, and even further muddies her decision not to end this with a call to the police that sets up two of the most gutting images of mothers who have lost their children ever put on film.

“Angel of Mine” is an example of how much can be determined by execution after the ink is dry on the premise: Farrant appears to be aiming for “complex morality” and “hard truths about grief, paranoia and parenthood.” (It sounds like one of those movies where everyone shouts “That’s my baby!”) It wants to be both those things and also a Hirokazu Kore-eda movie with stalker beats. Like Kore-eda’s domestic dramas, it is concerned with bloodless stakes over family that alter lives forever. Not all of these heights are reached; still, its confidence becomes fascinating along with its nagging suggestion that maybe Lizzie’s right.

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