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Janet Frame was a brilliant child who, as a teen, was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia. Explore Janet's discovery of the world and her life in Europe as her books are published to acclaim. (R, 158 min.)
7:00 PM
This monthly series showcases essential films everyone should see on the big screen.
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With An Angel at My Table, Academy Award–winning filmmaker Jane Campion brings to the screen the harrowing true-life story of Janet Frame, New Zealand’s most distinguished author. The film follows Frame along her inspiring journey, from a poverty-stricken childhood to a misdiagnosis of schizophrenia and electroshock therapy to, finally, international literary fame. Beautifully capturing the color and power of the New Zealand landscape, the film earned Campion a sweep of her country’s film awards and the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. [Janus]
Starring: Kerry Fox, Alexia Keogh, Karen Fergusson
Director: Jane Campion
Genre(s): Biography, Drama
"Angel's clear-headedness and unadorned filmmaking makes it all the more powerful."
— Alyx Vesey, Bitch Media
"This is filmmaking at the very peak of the medium`s potential."
— Dave Kehr, Chicago Tribune
"A potentially painful and harrowing film is imbued with gentle humor and great compassion, which makes every character come vividly alive."
— Staff, Variety
"The poetic empathy, the beautiful, offbeat framing and unexpected transitions, and the magnificent handling of actors are all pure Campion."
— Jonathan Rosenbaum, The Reader
"Campion's grasp of her material is intellectually and emotionally assured, while Fox's extraordinary performance demonstrates an honesty, courage and power that's rarely attempted, let alone achieved."
— David Parkinson, Empire
"Jane Campion's An Angel at My Table tells [Janet Frame's] story in a way that I found strangely engrossing from beginning to end. This is not a hyped-up biopic or a soap opera, but simply the record of a life as lived."
— Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
"Jane Campion has established a reputation for making slightly off-center films in which regular folks get glimpses of the darkness that lurks beneath the surfaces of their lives. An admirer of Frame's novels since she was a teenager, Campion builds her film around a heroine who defies Hollywood conventions"
— Staff, TV Guide Magazine
"There are none of the usual artist-biopic clichés here. Frame, as embodied by three uncannily-matched actresses, is bright but intensely, awkwardly passive, and inhabits a chaotic, arbitrary universe. Watching her hard, slow struggle for self-respect, happiness and peace becomes a profoundly moving, strangely affirmative experience."
— Staff, Time Out
"I feel that when I watch this movie I am participating in storytelling, in the building of the film. It emanates this feeling of somebody being there and just saying, 'I want to tell you a story,' and the way you’re guided through draws you in—through the colors, the actors—in a way that is so enjoyable it’s almost as if you’re in water and just let yourself be carried by the flow."
— Alice Rohrwacher, Criterion
"This is not only a great film by a great director – of course, there could never be any doubt about that – but for the first time I felt here was a film that could only have been made by a woman, this woman. And not only as a filmmaker but woman as a whole, brave, brave as a human can be. This is not a film about a brave woman's tormented heroic destiny... No, it has something deeper, more urgent to declare about films and women. This film changed my life as a woman, not simply as a filmmaker."
— Claire Denis, Sight and Soun
