Angel At My Table, An

Jane Campion's second feature moved away from her offbeat opening salvo with Sweetie (1989) and established her in the territory that she was to make her own: films about women, made largely for women, and increasingly, by women. This low-key biopic of carrot-topped New Zealand writer Janet Frame, adapted by regular Campion script collaborator, Laura Jones, from Frame's autobiographical writings has three actors seamlessly playing the writer at different stages of her life, Alexia Keogh as the chubby child, Karen Fergusson playing the post-adolescent and Kerry Fox taking over for the younger adult years which occupies the majority of the film.

Campion, well supported by her creative team including cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh, demonstrates her skill as a director although there is a tendency to dwell dutifully on intimate detail at the expense of dramatic effect, and the film could have been considerably shorter to no great loss. More problematically for a biopic we never find out what Frame is writing about and in the absence of any direct evidence of her apparently impressive literary skill the prolonged display of her pallid nervousness and chronic shyness becomes wearying.

 

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