Mark of An Angel (15)
- Starring: Catherine Frot, Sandrine Bonnaire
- Director: Safy Nebbou
- Duration: 95 mins
Two of French cinema’s finest performers wage a subtle war of nerves in this taut, unsettling psychological thriller. Elsa (Catherine Frot) is in the middle of a messy divorce from a husband who hints he will use her emotional instability in the fight for custody of their son. She subsequently becomes obsessed with a pretty young girl and starts to insinuate herself into the lives of the girl and her mother Claire (Sandrine Bonnaire). Is there a legitimate excuse for her increasingly unreasonable behaviour or is she losing her mind?
Reviews
Alison Rowat's Review
Safy Nebbou's engrossing picture has two of France's leading actresses staging a masterclass in classy melodrama.
Elsa (Catherine Frot) is a lone mother with a young son. At a birthday party he is attending she spies an angelic-looking girl. Wanting to learn more about the child's identity, the increasingly obsessed Elsa begins to stalk the family.
The tussle between Elsa and the girl's mother (played by Sandrine Bonnaire) is of the slow burn variety, and the more credible for it. While playing on such primal fears as the loss of a child, Nebbou's film is for the most part remarkably restrained.
Frot and Bonnaire are marvellous, competing for the audience's sympathy the whole time they are on screen.