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Angela (1995 film)
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Wikipedia article
'Angela' is a 1995 drama film directed by Rebecca Miller and starring John Ventimiglia, Anna Thomson, Miranda Stuart Rhyne and Vincent Gallo. Miller's directorial debut, it won awards at the Sundance Film Festival, the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film and the Gotham Awards.[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112364/awards Angela (1995) - Awards]
Plot
Angela is a 10-year-old girl trying to cope with a dysfunctional family and is on a quest to "purify" herself. Her parents, Mae and Andrew, are former performers who have resigned themselves to the loss of their dreams. They are now having problems in their relationship. Mae has drastic mood shifts that bring her from manic happiness to utter misery. Andrew 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 6 year old little sister, Ellie. Left to figure out everything for themselves, she grabs at scraps of religion, superstition, and fantasy to try to make some sense out of the world and understand the difference between good and evil.
Adrift, she and Ellie concoct magical rituals 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 neighborhood, 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 Ellie 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.
Angela may have inherited her mother's mental illness that is now beginning to manifest itself. Angela does appear to display some common attributes of what could be described as religious mania brought on by schizophrenia or a similar mental illness that involves visual and auditory hallucinations.
Cast
* John Ventimiglia as Andrew
* Anna Thomson as Mae
* Miranda Stuart Rhyne as Angela
* Vincent Gallo as Preacher
* Peter Facinelli as Lucifer
* Hynden Walch as Darlene
* Caitlin Hall as Anne
* Frances Conroy as Anne's mother
Reception
According to an article in 'The New York Times', 'Angela' is a "disturbing film" that "is at its best when looking at the world through Angela's eyes before she has gone numb."[https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9A02E5D81F39F935A15752C0A960958260 Movie Review - Angela - FILM REVIEW; New York Times]
References
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