Director: Jane Campion
Writers: Janet Frame, Laura Jones
Photography: Stuart Dryburth
Music: Don McGlashan
Editor: Veronika Jenet
Cast: Kerry Fox, Alexia Keogh, Karen Fergusson, Iris Churn, Kevin J. Wilson, Melina Bernecker, Glynis Angell, Sarah Smuts-Kennedy, Colin McColl, David Letch
I saw this picture when it was new in 1990 and loved it so much that I bought a one-volume of the Janet Frame memoirs on which it is based. Typically enough, I have been toting it around ever since and still haven’t read it. But the movie, directed by Jane Campion (The Piano, Holy Smoke, The Power of the Dog), still looked pretty darned good to me. It was created originally as a TV miniseries with three parts of about 50 minutes each, suitable for one-hour programming. The three parts, presented here as a “trilogy,” touch on Frame’s childhood, teenage, and adult years (from her memoirs, respectively, To the Is-Land, An Angel at My Table, and The Envoy From Mirror City).
Frame was born in 1924 in New Zealand and grew up at a time and in a place where mental illness was poorly understood. She was withdrawn, introverted, and shy, lost in the fairy tales, poetry, and stories she started reading and writing from a young age. Eventually, as a young adult training to be a teacher, she had a breakdown when an inspector visited her classroom. One thing led to another and then she was diagnosed (incorrectly) as schizophrenic, given electroshock treatments into the 1950s when the treatment was not understood well but administered frequently, and spent some eight years in and out of institutions, often returning voluntarily. An Angel at My Table tells much the whole sad and alarming story (albeit one with a happy ending).
I saw this picture when it was new in 1990 and loved it so much that I bought a one-volume of the Janet Frame memoirs on which it is based. Typically enough, I have been toting it around ever since and still haven’t read it. But the movie, directed by Jane Campion (The Piano, Holy Smoke, The Power of the Dog), still looked pretty darned good to me. It was created originally as a TV miniseries with three parts of about 50 minutes each, suitable for one-hour programming. The three parts, presented here as a “trilogy,” touch on Frame’s childhood, teenage, and adult years (from her memoirs, respectively, To the Is-Land, An Angel at My Table, and The Envoy From Mirror City).
Frame was born in 1924 in New Zealand and grew up at a time and in a place where mental illness was poorly understood. She was withdrawn, introverted, and shy, lost in the fairy tales, poetry, and stories she started reading and writing from a young age. Eventually, as a young adult training to be a teacher, she had a breakdown when an inspector visited her classroom. One thing led to another and then she was diagnosed (incorrectly) as schizophrenic, given electroshock treatments into the 1950s when the treatment was not understood well but administered frequently, and spent some eight years in and out of institutions, often returning voluntarily. An Angel at My Table tells much the whole sad and alarming story (albeit one with a happy ending).
The first part, To the Is-Land, is my favorite, or anyway I was happy to just watch it unspool taking minimal notes. Frame is played by Alexia Keogh with a striking orange dayglo ball of hair. Frame came from a large and impoverished family with all girls except one boy, who had epilepsy, understood at the time no better than mental illness. Their father thinks seizures are some kind of conscious choice on the part of the boy and keeps reprimanding him uselessly. Two of Janet’s sisters died young in drownings. Their father worked for the railroad and their mother was a housemaid in Katherine Mansfield’s family home (small world in New Zealand). The Frames are something of a dysfunctional family, but in spite (or because) of the pains and grief Janet had a rich childhood in her imagination, escaping to a natural and voracious love for literature. The New Zealand countryside was filmed in England but perhaps tinted to give it that familiar glowing-green look of New Zealand (or perhaps all those New Zealand scenes are tinted too? Tell me it ain’t so!).
The second part, An Angel at My Table, is where we get to the crux of Frame’s biography, the years of institutionalization. Now she is played by Karen Fergusson—the transitions between the three who play Frame are remarkably seamless, some excellent casting here. There is a dynamic in An Angel at My Table which is almost too good to be true—but its very unlikeliness is what makes me think it probably is. During these years of presumed schizophrenia (even if she were they still wouldn’t have known what to do about it then) Frame’s reputation as a writer was burgeoning. Her stories were being published and she was winning notice. In fact, when her collection The Lagoon and Other Stories was published in 1951, it won New Zealand’s prestigious Hubert Church Memorial Award. That led to the cancellation of a scheduled lobotomy for Frame (called a “leukotomy” in the movie). Just in time!
The third part, The Envoy From Mirror City, sees Frame living abroad in London and in Spain. She is played now by Kerry Fox, with the occasional nickname “Fuzzy” for her still striking ball of hair. She’s feeling herself out as a writer as well as sexually, a late bloomer in her 30s, which made me like her more. Inevitably she suffers her first heartbreak on her Spain sojourn. In London she meets Patrick (David Letch), who has uncomfortable designs on her and disapproves of her pursuit of writing. But Janet Frame may still be vulnerable and naïve, but she has achieved such a degree of maturity and integrity that he is not much of a problem for her. She knows herself now. She is writing novels and embarking on the high points of her literary career.
My favorite work from director Jane Campion tends to be from the ‘90s—An Angel at My Table (1990), The Piano (1993), and Holy Smoke (1999), specifically. People love the 1989 Sweetie, but I am more meh on it, as I am also on her 1996 Henry James adaptation The Portrait of a Lady. I think her 1983 short, Passionless Moments (available on the Criterion Channel), is also well worth tracking down. I’ve kind of lost track of her since Holy Smoke and, indeed, this was my first revisit to An Angel at My Table since it was new. It wasn’t quite the revelation for me it was the first time, but I still enjoyed it and think it’s worth seeing. It’s quick for a long movie, but you can also take it one 50-minute part at a time too.
The second part, An Angel at My Table, is where we get to the crux of Frame’s biography, the years of institutionalization. Now she is played by Karen Fergusson—the transitions between the three who play Frame are remarkably seamless, some excellent casting here. There is a dynamic in An Angel at My Table which is almost too good to be true—but its very unlikeliness is what makes me think it probably is. During these years of presumed schizophrenia (even if she were they still wouldn’t have known what to do about it then) Frame’s reputation as a writer was burgeoning. Her stories were being published and she was winning notice. In fact, when her collection The Lagoon and Other Stories was published in 1951, it won New Zealand’s prestigious Hubert Church Memorial Award. That led to the cancellation of a scheduled lobotomy for Frame (called a “leukotomy” in the movie). Just in time!
The third part, The Envoy From Mirror City, sees Frame living abroad in London and in Spain. She is played now by Kerry Fox, with the occasional nickname “Fuzzy” for her still striking ball of hair. She’s feeling herself out as a writer as well as sexually, a late bloomer in her 30s, which made me like her more. Inevitably she suffers her first heartbreak on her Spain sojourn. In London she meets Patrick (David Letch), who has uncomfortable designs on her and disapproves of her pursuit of writing. But Janet Frame may still be vulnerable and naïve, but she has achieved such a degree of maturity and integrity that he is not much of a problem for her. She knows herself now. She is writing novels and embarking on the high points of her literary career.
My favorite work from director Jane Campion tends to be from the ‘90s—An Angel at My Table (1990), The Piano (1993), and Holy Smoke (1999), specifically. People love the 1989 Sweetie, but I am more meh on it, as I am also on her 1996 Henry James adaptation The Portrait of a Lady. I think her 1983 short, Passionless Moments (available on the Criterion Channel), is also well worth tracking down. I’ve kind of lost track of her since Holy Smoke and, indeed, this was my first revisit to An Angel at My Table since it was new. It wasn’t quite the revelation for me it was the first time, but I still enjoyed it and think it’s worth seeing. It’s quick for a long movie, but you can also take it one 50-minute part at a time too.
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