Brightlyme i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

robert-temple-1 This film has been released in Britain under the title ANGEL OF MINE, although the American title is a direct translation of its original French title which is L'EMPREINTE DE LA ANGE. The 'angel' referred to is a little girl named Lola. This is a very, very strange story, and an extremely harrowing one. The two lead actresses, Catherine Frot and Sandrine Bonnaire, take emotions to the limit and then beyond. What pros they are! Frot has made 88 films and Bonnaire has made 51, including the amazing VAGABOND (1985) of Agnès Varda, where she showed at an early age just how far she could go in playing someone over the edge of human desperation. In this film, the two women are driven far, far over that edge. The scene where they physically fight and try to tear each other apart like demented harpies is deeply shocking, as women rarely are driven to such extremes of clawing, smashing, desperate combat. The director and co-writer of this film is Safy Debbou. Unfortunately, this very shy creature, which we may call The Safy, must be considered of indeterminate sex, as there is no hint as to whether it is male or female, due to the lack of information about it on IMDb. I am inclined to suspect that it may be female, but zoological confirmation of the sex of The Safy is so far lacking. Another thing which is lacking on IMDb is the listing of the title ANGEL OF MINE, so that British cinema-lovers looking up this film will not be able to find it listed at all. I certainly hope that deficiency may be remedied. Is this a conspiracy to keep everyone in the dark? Only joking. But there ought to be a warning on the front of the DVD: 'Unsuitable viewing for the emotionally vulnerable.' There is no blood, no gore, no one gets killed, we don't have to look at corpses and wounds, but we do have something which is almost worse: raw emotional frenzy. There is little one dare say about the film's plot without revealing too much. Catherine Frot had a daughter who died in a hospital fire, and she has been distraught and depressed for years because of this. It has led to the breakup of her marriage, despite the fact that she still has a son. Through the young son, she meets a friend of the son's friend, and thus encounters Sandrine Bonnaire and her daughter Lola. Frot becomes a stalker of the daughter, with whom she is obsessed. I should stress that this film claims to be 'based on true events'. The real story becomes something other than what one expects. After all, there have been far too many films about stalkers. This is not really a stalker film at all, it just seems that way in the beginning. Watch, but beware.

Mick-Jordan I often tell people that if they want to see a film – avoid the trailer. In the case of 'Mark of an Angel' I'd tell them to avoid the poster. While so many trailers these days seem to be potted synopses of the whole film ('Public Enemies' being a massive case in point) the tag-line of this film may give a way a crucial plot element of the story. Which would be a pity as this is a really first-class film. Class being the operative word given the acting talent on show here.Sandrine Bonnaire can do no wrong (unless it's required of her) and Catherine Frot has long since masked the art of barely suppressed tension and panic. Here she really brings it to the fore as she stars as Elsa, a woman with a long history of depression who develops a fascination with a seven year old girl she sees at a birthday party when she comes to collect her son. Determined to find out more about the girl she uses her son as a way in to the family ensuring that he befriends the girl's brother so that she can then befriend the girl's mother Claire (Bonnaire). She uses her son more and more in her pursuit of this obsession telling her employees that he is seriously ill so that she can run off and resume her stalking. She tells her parents she is dating so that they will baby-sit and she can do the same thing. At first Claire doesn't suspect anything but gradually notices that Elsa is paying too much attention to Lola – the girl in question. Meanwhile we are starting to realise why. Throughout the film you are not so much on the edge of your seat as pressed back into it. The tension as you wait desperately for Elsa to be found out is excruciating and when one particularly dramatic scene ends with what would normally be seen as the cop-out of Elsa suddenly waking up – you are just hugely relieved – they haven't caught her yet. And that's the thing – your sympathy is completely with Elsa, you cringe as she keeps accidentally turning up at every event involving Lola and her mother and you shudder as you watch this woman falling slowly apart. Frot really lays it on in this but Sandrine Bonnaire certainly holds her own when it comes her turn to convey the creeping (and increasing ) fear of this woman that is taking hold of her. There is one scene which is pure Hitchcock and clearly meant to be. Lola is performing in a ballet watched by her parents and brother in the audience. Claire notices her looking offstage to the wings a lot and when she turns herself she catches a glimpse of someone there. Is it Elsa? She can't be sure and she keeps straining between dancers to see but only gets the briefest of fleeting glances. It's an incredibly tense sequence of "Is it her?"/ "Is it not her?" made all the more so by the fact that we know – it is. Add to that the fact that the ballet the girls are dancing to is a musical simulation of a clock – ("Tick Tock" "Tick Tock") - and you're now pressed back into the seat behind you. This really is great stuff.

Catherine I thought this was a great film, totally compelling, with fine acting. In answer to the implausibility of the plot (based on true events) I would say that a mother can have a sixth sense about her offspring. Some people are much more visually aware than others and I think it's therefore possible to have an idea of what someone would look like years later. Besides there may well be photographs and memories of what close relatives looked like at a similar age which would heighten that sense of recognition. As for Sandrine Bonnaire not recognising Catherine Frot as the woman she presumed dead lying on the floor of the hospital, we don't know if they had much, if anything, to do with each other in the hospital and, panic-stricken as she was after realising that her own child had perished and in the midst of an inferno, it's perfectly plausible that she did not remember her. This is a film which will stay with me for some time and I'd thoroughly recommend it.

GUENOT PHILIPPE It seems that this story is based on actual events.Well, see for yourself...The yarn about a woman in her late thirties - Catherine Frot - who lives with her son and her next to be ex husband...During the birthday party of her son's school mate, with of course many children there, she notices the presence of a little seven old girl. And she decides to follow her, discover where she comes from...During the first part of the movie, she approaches the girl's mother - Sandrine Bonnaire, and her behavior seems to be more and more weird about it. You, in the audience, wonder why all this...Only near the ending - BEWARE, SPOILER !!! - you discover that the little girl is Catherine Frot's lost child, in a burning, when she was still a three days old baby!!! Of course, there is a hard struggle between the two women. Frot accuses Bonnaire to have stolen her daughter during the fire, seven years earlier.THE thing that you, spectator, wonder is :HOW THE HELL DID SHE DO TO RECOGNIZE HER LITTLE GIRL SEVEN YEARS AFTER SHE WAS ONLY A SEVERAL DAYS BABY ?!!!It's so big, so large, that you could easily let a truck pass through.But the acting of the two women is absolutely outstanding. It's worth seeing it for that reason.