ARTNEWSPRESS: In this chilly, predictable stalker mystery, Noomi Rapace plays a bereaved mother obsessed with another woman’s daughter.
It’s clear almost from the get-go what ails Lizzie (Noomi Rapace) in Kim Farrant’s “Angel of Mine,” a chilly stalker mystery with a single, trembly mood.
“You haven’t been doing so great” is the glaring understatement offered by her ex-husband (Luke Evans), by way of explaining why he’s seeking full custody of their young son. Popping pills and flinching at every shadow, Lizzie appears perpetually on the verge of a nervous breakdown — a ledge, we learn, she’s been dancing on for the past seven years. That was when her baby daughter perished in a fire and Lizzie appeared to lose her grip on reality. Now, she’s become fixated on Lola (Annika Whiteley), a doll-faced neighborhood seven-year-old, following her to the ice rink and peeping in the windows of her family’s luxury home. And that’s just for starters.
Though wearily predictable and consistently doleful, this intense study of maternal distress and incipient madness (a remake of the 2008 French drama “Mark of an Angel”), while remaining tightly focused on Lizzie’s mental anguish, is also attentive to its effect on those around her. Rapace’s jangly, one-note performance is rendered bearable by Yvonne Strahovski’s warmly natural turn as Lola’s increasingly furious mother, and Rob Collins is quietly sympathetic as Lizzie’s bemused and unfortunate one-night stand.
https://www.nytimes.com
Jeannette Catsoulis
