Everyday there’s stories and news that is difficult to believe. At the same time, it’s so strange that it’s easy to recognize it did happen because it’s hard to think someone could actually think of it. Such is the case with Safy Nebbou’s fascinating French film, Angel of Mine.
Elsa Valentin (Catherine Frot) has had her world torn apart. The death of her baby girl in a tragic accident years earlier continues to haunt her. She has spun into an irreconcilable state of grieving and depression that has wrecked her marriage and put a question mark on her sanity. One day, when Elsa goes to pick up her son from a birthday party she sees a girl that she swears is her daughter. But the idea doesn’t connect with everyone else. Already on the brink of insanity, Elsa’s idea that her daughter could be alive is seemingly another sign of her depression. But Elsa is insistent and starts to follow around the girl’s wealthy mother Claire (Sandrine Bonnaire) under the guise of a budding relationship.
With its subject matter, Angel of Mine could have easily delved into the depths of a TV movie of the week filled with melodramatics and distant characterizations. The plot walks a precarious line between the overly dramatic and the potentially ridiculous. Instead it’s filled with tension, almost like a subtle thriller. The two main leads make this possible with humanizing performances that keep the bizarre plot in check. Both Frot and Bonnaire play their parts somewhat quietly and understated. Frot, in particular, could have made Elsa a screaming, overly emotional victim. Instead she’s stoic yet fragile
Angel of Mine does a fantastic job of balancing the story’s plausibility. The simple idea of making Elsa’s claims believable, let alone possible are a tremendous feat. Not only does it succeed on this front, but offers a slow build that reveals the key points slowly. Starting out as an exploration of grief on the bordering on insanity and ending up somewhere completely different, Angel of Mine takes an absurd story that is so strange it had to have been based on something true and makes beautiful art with it.
Angel of Mine Gallery
