[Film Review] An Angel at My Table (1990)

Jane Campion's second feature film, AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE is a biopic about New Zealand author Janet Frame (1924-2004), adapted by Laura Jones from Frame's own autobiographical trilogy, covering roughly the first four decades of her checkered life and is accordingly divided into three parts.

Part I is about her upbringing, with her signature curly auburn hair and chubby figure, Janet (played by 3 actresses in different stages, with Fox hogging the lion's share as the adult Janet) is born in a working-class family with other four siblings (in toto four girls and a boy), and never feels confident about her appearance, instead she finds solace in literature and exhibits her talent in writing at an early age. However, during her formative years, she becomes increasingly withdrawn and antsy around other people, partly due to her sensitivity (an act of filching humiliates her and leaves her spurned by her classmates, a sororal bond with a foul-mouthed girl, who is a victim of domestic violence, is cut loose when she innocently blurts out the birds and the bees in front of the whole family), partly due to family misfortunes (two of her sisters will die from drowning in two separate accidents in their adolescence and her only brother is smitten by epilepsy), consequentially, she is incapable of breaking out of her shell to mingle with others, which prompts her to impulsively abandons her vocation as a schoolteacher.

Her talent with words is recognized by Mr. Forrest (McColl), her psychology lecturer in the University of Otago, whom she develops a crush on. Yet, it is also he who becomes the originator of her darkest days. Under the pretext of solicitude, he advises that Janet should be hospitalized after he learns about her suicidal attempt (a scene strangely doesn't take place on screen, which should've also justified her decayed teeth, which feature prominently in Part II), which begins her nightmare of an eight-year stint in different asylums to treat her certified schizophrenia, during which she is subjected to umpteen electro-shock therapy and barely escapes from a prospective lobotomy thanks to the timely publication of her first short story collection in 1951. On top of that, it is terminally stupefying to find out that her diagnosis is totally bogus. There is nothing wrong about her, she is a shy girl who wants to be a writer in a biased world, she must suffer because of her difference.

Janet is a born-writer and needs her own private space to create without worrying about livelihood, a mentorship from named writer Frank Sargeson (Sanderson), who enjoys sunbathing in the buff, is what she hurts for. After that, in Part III, a literature grant facilitates her to up sticks in Europe. A dalliance with an American professor and soi-disant poet Bernard (Brandt) in Ibiza proffers her a belated romance and heartbreak which she doesn't feel confident to experience at an earlier age. She is also offered the chance to settle down with a puritanical British man (Letch), to which she assuredly kisses goodbye. Campion is a sober-minded critic and storyteller, gingerly not to go overboard with emotion, she regards the atrocity, the injustice, the torment, the ridicule, all leveling toward a perfectly fine woman with a clinical stare. Her tone of steely femininity will become her trump card among her peerage.

AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE ends in an auspicious note with an onrush of words materializing on the paper of a typewriter, Janet finally comes into her own, returning home and plugging away inside the trailer in the backyard of her sister's family, she comes to terms with herself, she doesn't have to leave her shell, her shyness is integral to who she is, like her hair, and her talent can no longer be erased or ignored.

Campion's virtuosity of gleaning a pellucid storyline out of a massive amount of occurrences is a stunning feat, so is the proficiency manifested in her directorial flair. All those incidental, sometimes discrete episodes in Janet's life are assembled with great dexterity and deliberation, anchored by Kerry Fox's unwaveringly nervy, discomfited debut performance, fully embodying Janet's interiority with fine-tuned nuances, AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE is a biopic audaciously doing right by its subject and meantime, mirroring its filmmakers's own perspective in sharp focus.

referential entries: Campion’s THE POWER OF THE DOG (2021, 8.5/10); Peter Jackson’s HEAVENLY CREATURES (1994, 8.7/10); Gillian Armstrong’s MY BRILLIANT CAREER (1979, 8.0/10).

Title: An Angel at My Table

Year: 1990

Genre: Biography, Drama

Country: New Zealand, Australia, UK, USA

Language: English, Spanish

Director: Jane Campion

Screenwriter: Laura Jones

Based on the autobiographies of Janet Frame

Music: Don McGlashan

Cinematography: Stuart Dryburgh

Editor: Veronika Jenet

Cast:

Kerry Fox

Alexia Keogh

Karen Fergusson

Iris Churn

Kevin J. Wilson

Melina Bernecker

Glynis Angell

Sarah Smuts-Kennedy

Andrew Robertt

Colin McColl

Martyn Sanderson

William Brandt

Gerald Bryan

David Letch

Rating: 8.2/10