Angel of Mine (2019)

Angel of Mine review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

The very premise of Angel of Mine is an assembly that could so easily spiral out from mere tragedy to full-blown ridiculousness. Noomi Rapace plays Lizzie, a new mother who experiences the absolutely worst possible scenario for her newborn baby. Her baby Rosie dies in a fire at a hospital no less, along with 12 other mothers and babies. That’s a horrifying enough situation, but it’s merely the placement for a thriller about one woman struggling to find any means of feeling like the mother of a daughter. Her marriage begins to crumble with her diminishing love for Mike (Luke Evans), she feels distant from her son Thomas and life becomes pale.

But then something miraculous happens. Lizzie meets the mother Claire (Yvonne Strahovski) with her little girl Lola. Lola looks suspiciously as how Lizzie would imagine Rosie looking if she had aged seven years to that day. Is it really her little girl? Did she survive the fire? Or is Lizzie just losing her grip on reality? Whatever the reason, Lizzie is determined to find an answer, even if it means breaking and entering, possibly even getting into some fights.

Lizzie becomes that troubled woman in a sitcom that is hard to root for, even when realizing she may be onto something. She’s portrayed as a mother of bitter desperation that goes to great lengths to find the truth about her daughter. Her creepiness goes to extra levels of absurd when she sneaks into Lola room to steal her hairbrush for a DNA sample. Somehow I feel there are less invasive ways of accomplishing this that don’t involve falling asleep in someone else’s house. Lizzie will also get into a fight with Claire as she believes her to be a kidnapper, as one may expect from such a thriller.

There are a handful of tense senes and strong performances to make Angel of Mine a capable enough thriller. However, there’s an aspect I feel here that goes greatly untapped from this genre of kidnap thrillers. The children are treated strictly as MacGuffins in this kinda story, where the more interesting tale of how Lola will adjust to being Rosie. How will she process her new mom that was her biological mother? Will she be bitterly unaccepting of Lizzie considering what ultimately happens to Claire in the end? That would be a far more interesting story than the mere lukewarm mystery of whether or not Rosie is Lizzie’s daughter. Sadly, with a lot of thrillers of this nature, the kids get tossed aside for the desires of the parent.

Perhaps I’m seeking too much from a thriller such as this but I’ve been worn enough by this format that I’m tired of the whole just-get-the-kid-back plotting with the children given the same amount of attachment as a briefcase of money. I’m fairly certain in a story such as this that Lizzie would shove Lola through an air duct if it meant reaquiring her daughter. While I understand this is more or less the intent of such a thriller, it doesn’t make it any less absurdly agonizing that the mother is seen as more damaged than the kid.