Themes: Sibling Relationships, Religious Zealotry, Mothers and Daughters
Main Cast: John Ventimiglia, Miranda Stuart Rhyne, Charlotte Blythe, Vincent Gallo
Release Year: 1995
Country: US
Run Time: 105 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
Two children from a working-class family in New York struggle to understand the story of God versus Lucifer as they try to deal with a mentally ill mother in this intense, realistic, spiritual drama. Angela is ten-years-old and has visions of angels. She spends much of her time trying to comprehend the tale of God and Lucifer. She also tries to protect her baby sister, six-year-old, Ellie by cautioning her to stay clean and good lest the Devil take her away. Ellie and Angela have been moved several times in their life. Their father, Andrew, is a hard worker; their mother, Mae, is becoming increasingly mentally ill. The children frequently witness her outbursts, but can do nothing to stop her sad descent. Sometimes Angela spies on them as they make love. After Mae is finally placed in an institution the girls must spend many hours on their own. At one point they assist their pregnant sitter when her water breaks. At another they manage to get away from a child molester at a carnival. In the final scene, Angela decides to baptize herself in the river and finally finds the transformation she sought. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Review
Slow-moving and dreamlike, writer/director Rebecca Miller's debut feature Angela is a stylized drama about childhood that follows the dream logic of a darkly emphatic ten-year-old with a mentally ill mother. Angela's (Miranda Stuart Rhyne) spiritual quest is taken very seriously, entitling her to manifested visions, plenty of silent brooding, and rambling monologues about made-up rituals. Though she gives a great performance, Rhyne is just too much of a regular kid to be convincing as a religious freak. The back story and time period are left ambiguous; instead the scenes flow like traces of memories leaving much implausibility. Though it requires patience to appreciate, the random images (a white pony, a runaway roller skate) and bizarre occurrences (a makeover booth at a carnival, a Barbie thrown from a window) can be pieced together as a sensitive picture of an intense young girl. What's troubling is how Angela's mother, Mae (Anna Thomson), influences her and how Angela, in turn, influences her impressionable little sister, Ellie (Charlotte Blythe). It's interesting to note that the costuming and behavior of Mae suggests a disintegrating Marilyn Monroe, since the director's father, Arthur Miller, was married to the real-life Marilyn Monroe until 1961, a year before her death. The relevance of this family connection is not made clear in the narrative; like so much else in the film, it's left to the viewer's imagination and level of involvement. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
Pam Reece - Casting, Cindy Tolan - Casting, Todd Thomas - Costume Designer, Rebecca Miller - Director, Melody London - Editor, Michael Rohatyn - Composer (Music Score), Daniel Talpers - Production Designer, Ellen Kuras - Cinematographer, Ron Kastner - Producer, Lemore Syvan - Producer, Caroline Seckinger - Set Designer, Stefan Springman - Sound/Sound Designer, Rebecca Miller - Screenwriter
Angela is an award winning 1995 film and the first film directed by Rebecca Miller. It won awards at the Sundance Film Festival, the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film and the Gotham Awards.[1]
Plot
This film is the story a young girl and her quest to "purify" herself.
Angela (Miranda Stuart Rhyne) is a ten year old girl trying to cope with a dysfunctional family. Her parents are former performers who have resigned themselves to the loss of their dreams. They are now having problems in their relationship. Her mother Mae (Anna Thomson) has drastic mood shifts that bring her from manic happiness to utter misery. Her father Andrew (John Ventimiglia) tries to hold everyone together, but Mae's vacillations are becoming more than he can manage. Angela, tries to cope by inventing an imaginary universe of 'order' for herself and her little sister. Left to figure out everything for themselves, she grabs at scraps of religion, superstition, and fantasy to try and make some sense out of the world and understand the difference between good and evil.
Adrift, she and her six year old sister Ellie (Charlotte Eve Blythe) concoct magicalrituals and have visions of fallen angels and the Virgin Mary; reading signs in the way a towel falls off a chair or a tool falls off a truck, they set off to find their way to heaven. They wander through the neighbourhood, meet a lot of strange people, and try to find a way to absolve themselves of whatever 'sins' they may have committed, and 'go to heaven'.
At first, the stories that Angela tells her little sister are mainly meant to scare her into submission. But as time goes on, and her mother succumbs to mental illness, Angela becomes obsessed with the idea that the only way her mother is going to get better is if she and her sister can wash away all of their sins.
