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Here’s the story of a woman who overcame adversity — not the dramatic, historical kind, but the sort of mundane discriminatory issues that come along with being ‘different.’ Director Jane Campion’s biographical drama about the unsteady life and amusing triumphs of New Zealand author Janet Frame was adapted from a TV miniseries. Poor, isolated and socially excluded, Frame jumps from one unfortunate problem to the next, but is repeatedly rescued by her own talent… at one point a writing award saves her from being lobotomized. Criterion’s extras include a candid audio interview with the author herself.

An Angel at My Table

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 301

1990 / Color / 1.78 widescreen / 158 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date August 6, 2019 / 31.96

Starring: Kerry Fox, Alexia Keogh, Karen Fergusson, Iris Churn, Jessie Mune, Kevin J. Wilson.

Cinematography: Stuart Dryburgh

Film Editor: Veronika Haeussler

Original Music: Don McGlashan

Written by Laura Jones from books by...

The result is a film that should please her growing number of admirers and also rope in the more sedate art-house crowd, including those who like a genteel treatment of even the most shocking subjects. Although it has a bit of a built-in handicap at its 160-minute running time, its three-part structure manages to keep the narrative brisk all the same, and this special jury prize winner from the 1990 Venice Film Festival looks like a solid specialty entry.

The film is based on three autobiographical volumes by New Zealand novelist Janet Frame, who, despite a Depression-era childhood in economically deprived rural New Zealand and a misdiagnosis of schizophrenia during her college years, managed to turn herself into a prize-winning writer.

Each of the film's three sections deals with a different part of her life, concentrating on the way the shy and withdrawn Frame managed to impose a gentle order on the aggressive and threatening world around her through the obdurate persistence of her own vision.

''To the Is-Land'' follows Frame (played by Alexia Keogh and Karen Fergusson) from childhood through the dawn of adolescence, concentrating on her relations with her family and her earliest attempts at writing. Although marked by the death of a much-beloved sister, this part of the film, warmer and more nostalgic than what follows, is an appropriate introductory interlude.

In ''An Angel at My Table, '' Frame goes off to teacher's college, where her withdrawn temperament leads a kindly teacher to suspect her of being mentally ill. The misdiagnosis and eight years of hospitalization, including shock treatment, follows before public recognition from her writing causes the doctors to examine and ultimately release her.

In ''The Envoy From Mirror City, '' Frame embarks on a literary fellowship to Europe, where she must navigate all the poseurs and predators of '50s bohemia in London and Ibiza. Here the film rounds itself off perfectly, as Frame indulges her romantic passions, experiences more lionization, and finally is cleared of the lingering diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Campion, working from a screenplay by Laura Jones, never strays from Frame's point of view. As a result, although there are twists in the plot that occasionally do not become immediately clear, their dawning impact on Frame has an undiluted power.

All the performances are good --particularly the two younger leads Keogh and Fergusson, Iris Churn as Frame's mother, David Letch as a possessive Irishman, and William Brandt as an American fling -- but as the older Frame, Kerry Fox is exceptional, all soft and passive on her auburn-and-white outside, but still suggestive of the quiet determination that led her character to persevere in the face of such awful circumstances.

Finally, in a film that would not at first glance seem to provide such opportunities, cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh has manipulated light and color in a way that matches Frame's emotional advances and retreats with their correlatives in warmth and hue.

AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE

Fine Line Features

Director Jane Campion

Producer Bridget Ikin

Co-producer John Maynard

Screenplay Laura Jones

Cinematography Stuart Dryburgh

Production designer Grant Major

Costume designer Glenys Jackson

Editor Veronika Haussler

Composer Don McGlashan

Color

Cast:

Janet Frame Kerry Fox

Young Janet Alexia Keogh

Teenage Janet Karen Fergusson

Mum Iris Churn

Elasping time -- 158 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

(c) The Hollywood Reporter...

The result is a film that should please her growing number of admirers and also rope in the more sedate art-house crowd, including those who like a genteel treatment of even the most shocking subjects. Although it has a bit of a built-in handicap at its 160-minute running time, its three-part structure manages to keep the narrative brisk all the same, and this special jury prize winner from the 1990 Venice Film Festival looks like a solid specialty entry.

The film is based on three autobiographical volumes by New Zealand novelist Janet Frame, who, despite a Depression-era childhood in economically deprived rural New Zea-

AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE

Fine Line Features

Director Jane Campion

Producer Bridget Ikin

Co-producer John Maynard

Screenplay Laura Jones

Cinematography Stuart Dryburgh

Production designer Grant Major

Costume designer Glenys Jackson

Editor Veronika Haussler

Composer Don McGlashan

Color

Cast:

Janet Frame Kerry Fox

Young Janet Alexia Keogh

Teenage Janet Karen Fergusson

Mum Iris Churn

Running time -- 158 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

land and a misdiagnosis of schizophrenia during her college years, managed to turn herself into a prize-winning writer.

Each of the film's three sections deals with a different part of her life, concentrating on the way the shy and withdrawn Frame managed to impose a gentle order on the aggressive and threatening world around her through the obdurate persistence of her own vision.

''To the Is-Land'' follows Frame (played by Alexia Keogh and Karen Fergusson) from childhood through the dawn of adolescence, concentrating on her relations with her family and her earliest attempts at writing. Although marked by the death of a much-beloved sister, this part of the film, warmer and more nostalgic than what follows, is an appropriate introductory interlude.

In ''An Angel at My Table, '' Frame goes off to teacher's college, where her withdrawn temperament leads a kindly teacher to suspect her of being mentally ill. The misdiagnosis and eight years of hospitalization, including shock treatment, follows before public recognition from her writing causes the doctors to examine and ultimately release her.

In ''The Envoy From Mirror City, '' Frame embarks on a literary fellowship to Europe, where she must navigate all the poseurs and predators of '50s bohemia in London and Ibiza. Here the film rounds itself off perfectly, as Frame indulges her romantic passions, experiences more lionization, and finally is cleared of the lingering diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Campion, working from a screenplay by Laura Jones, never strays from Frame's point of view. As a result, although there are twists in the plot that occasionally do not become immediately clear, their dawning impact on Frame has an undiluted power.

All the performances are good --particularly the two younger leads Keogh and Fergusson, Iris Churn as Frame's mother, David Letch as a possessive Irishman, and William Brandt as an American fling -- but as the older Frame, Kerry Fox is exceptional, all soft and passive on her auburn-and-white outside, but still suggestive of the quiet determination that led her character to persevere in the face of such awful circumstances.

Finally, in a film that would not at first glance seem to provide such opportunities, cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh has manipulated light and color in a way that matches Frame's emotional advances and retreats with their correlatives in warmth and hue.

(c) The Hollywood Reporter...