Sweet Angel Baby

In a small seaside fishing village, the Catholic church and associated land is to be sold to cover reparations for priestly misconduct. Eliza, her mother, and other women of the community, try to fund-raise to save the church.

Eliza has two secrets. One is that she has been taking artistic selfies of herself and posting them on social media, picking up a decent number of followers. The other is a relationship with Toni, the village's only openly lesbian. Things go awry when a wealthier resident finds her pictures, and blackmails her into having sex with him.

The scenery is gorgeous, and I am amused at an old-fashioned cut to crashing waves. There may be slightly too many characters in the movie, but it is otherwise well done.

A slow moving quiet meditation on the paradoxes of the human condition focused on the community of a small coastal town. I found this film an interesting character study, beautiful, unknowable and horrible it stripped bare, pardon the pun, many of the core building blocks, hypocrisies and cruelties that make up people and our social reality.

The cast and performances are all very good, however there might one or two many characters to follow throwing one off the story a bit. Michaela Kurimsky is wonderful and mesmerising to watch. I found myself caring deeply for Eliza.

This film looks great and the location is an interesting place to visit adding value.

I really enjoyed this sombre story, despite it's darker nature it still contains beauty and hope and wonder. It affected me in much the same way as the novel The Outsider affected me.

I would recommend this film to any thinking sensitive being who doesn't require explosions and chase sequences to hold their attention and is more interested in our inner worlds, how we react to each other and what makes us tick.