An Angel at My Table

There's something really outstanding about this biopic about New Zealand writer Janet Frame. The subject matter itself isn't the sort of thing that will automatically be relevant to all viewers, but director Jane Campion's treatment of a rich source material (Frame's three memoirs) created a piece of cinematic art that gained a lot of international attention back in 1990. An Angel at My Table is probably the earliest-made New Zealand film to to truly break free of New Zealand's domestic market, attracting kudos from renowned critic Roger Ebert, the Venice Film Festival and even the Independent Spirit Awards in America.

Janet Frame (Kerry Fox) is a chubby, redhaired girl growing up in '30s and '40s rural New Zealand. She's an awkward creature, continually placed on the outside by the isolated society she lives in, ostracised by her peers and devastatingly shy. As she grows older she becomes a bit more assured and daring, seeking to find her place in the world as a cultural aesthete and budding writer. Unfortunately, despite her talent, she encounters several setbacks - including a rather hellish stint in a psychiatric hospital. She becomes a prisoner in her own body, subject to the 'good' intentions of those who claim to know better than her.

What makes An Angel at My Table so effective is that it doesn't elevate any single part of Frame's story to centrestage. This means that, while her time in the psychiatric ward is quite a formative source of frustration, the film neither starts or ends with this focal event. Frame's shyness and unusual talent for writing actually meant that she was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia. As it was the 1940s this meant shock treatment and, as the film depicts, the possibility of lobotomisation. There's an ever so slight suggestion in the film that Frame's misdiagnosis was possibly an exploitative measure designed to help sell her first book... which is quite bloody heinous if you ask me! That aside though, I found this particular part of the film a bit harrowing, and I was glad to see that Campion didn't frame it as the most important event in Frame's life.

The real appeal of this film is that it takes an idiosyncratic bildungsroman and cuts right to the heart of its underlying universalness. Campion is interested in the horrors of growing up, the ways that we come into this world not knowing anything about it and how this can impact upon our psyche. I couldn't help but cringe in sympathy at the image of the young Frame (Karen Fergusson) trying to win friends with stolen chewing gum, only to undergo traumatic humiliation afterwards when her teacher and parents find out. This is a memoir that shows the many tiny failures that haunt a life, the memories that make us who we are and hold us back from our true potential. Frame's eventual self-acceptance and peace is hard-won in a gentle sort of way, but the audience feels it with her, and this in a big part due to Kerry Fox. Fox is particularly wonderful as the adult Frame; there's no vanity or glamour in her performance at all, she plays it befitting to Frame's story. There's a raw delicateness in her performance that feels entirely real.

The attention to detail is visceral and evocative... the way that Campion's camera lingers on certain images is key to our recognition; a pile of cutlery clattering as Frame's brother slams them in frustration, a man's legs crossing as he relaxes to music, a turn of phrase used by a teacher, a mentally ill man glimpsed by the young Frame at a train station. It's naturalistic but vivid, unobtrusive in its observations of life and the multiplicity of narratives that weave through it. The pain and power of a life has been captured in Frame's remniscences, and Campion uses this to distill an entire youth into a daisy-chain of vignettes and moments to build a strong and unforced uber-narrative.

DIRECTOR: Jane Campion
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Laura Jones, based on the memoirs of Janet Frame.
KEY ACTORS: Kerry Fox, Alexia Keogh, Karen Fergusson, Kevin J. Wilson, Martyn Sanderson

RELATED TEXTS
- Janet Frame's memoirs: To the Is-Land, An Angel at My Table and The Envoy From Mirror City.
- Jane Campion's other two big early films are Sweetie and The Piano.
- Other similar biopics/true stories about psychiatric misdiagnosis, madness, and art: My Brilliant Career, The Bell Jar, Frances, Lilian's Story and My Left Foot.
- For another (and altogether less brilliant) film about growing up different in rural New Zealand, see 50 Ways of Saying Fabulous.

AWARDS
Independent Spirit Awards - won Best Foreign Film.
NZ Film Awards - won Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress (Kerry Fox), Best Supporting Actor (Martyn Sanderson) and Best Screenplay.
Venice Film Festival - won Elvira Notari Prize, Bastone Bianco Award, Grand Special Jury Prize, Little Golden Lion and OCIC Award.