Angel Face (Vanessa Fihlo, 2018); France

Reviewed by William Edwards at the 2019 Santa Barbara Film Festival.

The extraordinary movie, “Angel Face”, was something that could not be imagined beforehand, since there’s never been a movie like it.  And the fascinating part of the story is that it’s by a first time director, Vanessa Fihlo, who I recently saw at a group panel for woman directors.   Needless to say, the unusual aspect of this movie is that the main character is a child alongside the fact that the narrative itself employs the development, if you can call it that, of this very child.

Ayline Aksoy Etaix plays a young girl whose mother is something of a delinquent; a woman who has regressed back to adolescence and we have no idea why.  Unfortunately for the young girl, Elli, she is basically left without adequate care and we see the scary conditions that she must navigate in such a direct way.  Although she does not have to take care of her mother, played with great aplomb by the veteran actress Marion Cotillard, she nevertheless, has to find some means to understand her parentless environment.

At a particular point of the movie, the mother has such diminished capacity as a responsible parent that she actually takes Elli along to an adult nightclub in which case, she leaves with a man and does not return for days on end.  Elli must then make her own way through a variety of challenges until she meets another man, an unlikely ex-diver named Julio who finds himself in the unlikely position of being a surragate father for this wayward young girl.

The depth of suffering and confusion is remarkably played by this young actress and we hope that she gets many roles in the future.  Kudos also the writer and director, Fihlo, for this brave portrayal of a brave young girl and the pitiful conditions that she is surrounded by and through which she must go through.  This is a simply inspiring movie as it adequately addresses real life conditions and shows hope for even the most downtrodden family conditions.